Ritten

Rittner Horn

Rittner Horn

Rittner Horn, the family friendly ski resort, is only 10 min away from the Hotel Post Victoria ***S.

The Rittner Train - South Tyrol’s last narrow track railway

The Rittner Train

The Ritten railway opened for service on 13th August 1907, at that time connecting the main square of Bozen, the Waltherplatz with Klobenstein, making Ritten easily accessible for tourism. In 1907 a narrow gouge railway was completed from the centre of Bozen to Klobenstein, dropping the cog engine required for the steep 1000-meter ascent of the mountain. In Maria Himmelfahrt and continuing as a tramway, which still is in use today, to Oberbozen and Klobenstein. The railway brought such guests as Sigmund Freud, who celebrated his silverwedding at Bemelman’s hotel in Klobenstein, and Bronislaw Malinowski, considered by many the father of modern anthropology, who bought a house in oberbozen and lived there until 1939. The writer Hans von Hoffensthal, who was bor on the Ritten, claimed when it was opened that the introduction of the railway changed the character of the Ritten for ever, but the complention of a paved road in 1971 brought further changes, and in 1966 the cog railway gave way to a cable car from Bozen to Oberbozen. Many people now use the cable car or highway to commute to and from Bozen in daili modern variation on the old June to September "Sommerfrische".

The Rittner Earth pyramids

The Earth pyramids

The Rittner Earth pyramidsThe famous Earth Pyramids are among the most celebrated natural features on the Ritten. The raw material for the earth pyramids comes from moraine clays deposited by the main Eisack valley glacier, as well as local tributary glaciers, in the late ice age.

When dry, this moraine clay is as hard as stone; dampened it forms a porridge-like substance which begins to slip and flow downhill. In this way, over a period of time, the saturated earth slides down into the stream below and is washed away. This constant and continuous slippage is temporarily halted only when this erosion encounters a forest where the underlying ground is so dry that it is rock hard, which hinders further rapid slippage. This is how those steep cliffs, up to 10 to 15 metres in height and a pre-condition for the formation of the earth pyramids, are made. Wherever the moraine contains larger stones which keep the earth underneath dry and hard, earth pyramids are formed by literally being "washed", or more precisely eroded, out of these cliffs. The higher the cliff and the higher up a suitable stone is found, the taller and mightier the resulting pyramid becomes.

On the Ritten you‘ll find several earth pyramids, whereby those in the "Katzenbachtal" below Oberbozen and particularly in the "Finsterbachtal", between Lengmoos and Mittelberg, which are most well-known. Further one finds still earth pyramids in the proximity of Unterinn.

Geological information

The granite-like quartz-porphyry plateau of the Ritten, with its various but predominantly purplish colours, is part of the largest exposed area of volcanic rock in the Alps, in striking contrast to the limestone of the Dolomites. Because of the way the porphyry is fractured, it does not hold groundwater, and as a result much of the Ritten, although well supplied with good soft drinking water, suffers shortages for agricultural purposes in dry years. The chief sources of agricultural land on the plateau, therefore, are moraine soils deposited from the late ice age glaciers of the Eisack and neighbouring valleys, which also deposited the small amounts of lime found on the Ritten (one of the reasons why older buildings were almost entirely of wood - there were no raw materials for mortar).

Moraine clay and boulders embedded in it are also the source of the Ritten's famous "earth pyramids". These curious boulder-topped spikes are formed when water erosion of a steep moraine cliff exposes hard igneous rocks, which then become protective caps that keep the clay immediately underneath dry, hard, and thus immune to further erosion until the stone cap eventually falls off. The process is continuous, with new pyramids forming as old ones disappear. Where larger portions of the clay remain, on top of the harder porphyry, groundwater is held and provides better agricultural land, but may also create the moors, locally called Moos, that are another common feature of the Ritten landscape.

The Emperor’s Road

The Eisack gorge between Bozen and Kollmann was impassable until the late Middle Ages. The Rhaetians were the first to lay a track across the slopes of the Ritten mountain. The Romans had no alternative but to improve the road across the Ritten, which they subsequently used for their military campaigns in northern Europe.

This in parts extremely arduous road attained its greatest significance in the High Middle Ages as the "Coronation Road of the German Kings”. German monarchs are supposed to have travelled along this road more than 60 times en route to and from Rome.

They reached the highest point at the Ulrich-Pass at Lengmoos where a hospice run by the German Order of Knights was situated.

Art & Culture

Whoever is interested in art and culture will be offered a lot on the Ritten. That begins already with the churches, to which the more than 30 Churches and chapels bear witness. Worth seeing above all are the St. Antonius Church in Klobenstein (built 1673, with pictures by Unterberger and Henrici), the parish church of Lengmoos with tower and portal from the 13th Century and the oldest House of God on the Ritten, the Nikolaus church in Mittelberg from the 13/14th Century with important frescoes.

The delicate neo-gothic church at the old farmstead of Kematen above Klobenstein was copied exactly in 1895 from the old-gothic, 400 year older St. Martin's church in Goeflan in the Vinschgau. A further strange thing to be found in the pilgrimage church of Maria Saal from the 16/17th Century is a painting of the Virgin with an umbrella! Particularly worth seeing are the little church of St. George and James (Jakob), standing alone on a hill below Maria Himmelfahrt (with beautiful late Romanesque frescoes), as well as the church of St. Verena between Lengstein and Barbian (mentioned for the first time in 1256; the tower dates from the 14th Century), which because of its idyllic situation on a glacier-smoothed outcrop lures one to stay and dream.

ICE RINK RITTEN

Mirror-smoothly into the new millennium - ice-coldly and mirror-smoothly circle hobby and professional ice skaters on the Ritten in the new millennium: At the renovated international Ice Rink Ritten, which represents an absolute world novelty at the ice high-speed run sector with 400 m length and a turning radius of 26/30 meters. The whole winter over are standing "hot ice events" on the program.

It starts with the Grand Prix open Int. And also in the new millennium it turns around speed and hundredths. The highlights thereby are the Millennium Competition with considerable speed-skating athletes from all the world, Triveneti Championship, Ritten Trophy Sprint and Primi Sprint open. The Ice Rink Ritten stands open for the public run from November till the end of February each Sunday of 14.00 to 16,30 o'clock. In the Rittner "winter in the mountains" one free entrance to the Ice Rink by the way is included. For "Holidays on Ice" as well as in Klobenstein there is the natural ice rink in Oberbozen and the Wolfsgruben Lake. Afterwards one can watch hockey players chasing the puck in the new ice hall in Klobenstein.