Innsbruck and the Tyrol

Most cities keep their mountains at a polite distance. Innsbruck has them at the end of the street. Stand in the old town and look north and the Nordkette, a great wall of the Alps, rises almost from the rooftops, grey and steep. It is the setting that makes the city, and the city has always known it.

The name tells you where it began. Innsbruck means the bridge over the Inn, Oeni Pons in the Latin of its old documents, and a bridge across the river here, in the twelfth century, was the start of the town. The bridge is still on the city's coat of arms, a bird's-eye view of it that has been used since 1267.

An emperor's balcony

The best-known sight in the old town is a balcony. The Goldenes Dachl, the Golden Roof, was built around 1500 for the Emperor Maximilian I, to mark his marriage to Bianca Maria Sforza, and it is roofed with 2,657 tiles of fire-gilded copper that catch the sun and glow above the narrow street. They are not solid gold, which comes as a relief to anyone who has worried about the roof's security, but they look it.

Maximilian left the city something stranger, too. In the Hofkirche, the court church, his tomb is surrounded by twenty-eight larger-than-life bronze figures, standing guard in the dim church. Some of them were made to designs that are linked with Albrecht Dürer, which gives an idea of the ambition of the thing. Locals call them the Schwarzmander, the black men, although eight of them are women. The emperor himself is not in the tomb. It is empty; he was buried elsewhere. That does not seem to have discouraged the figures, who go on keeping watch over it.

From the Golden Roof it is a short walk south to Maria-Theresien-Strasse, the broad street of the newer town, with the Annasäule, St Anne's Column, standing in the middle of it. It is the classic view of Innsbruck: tall façades on either side, a column in the middle, and the Nordkette filling the sky at the far end. If you take one photograph in the city, it will probably be from here.

The Olympic city

Innsbruck has hosted the Winter Olympic Games twice, in 1964 and in 1976, and the mountains around it are scattered with the evidence. On the Bergisel is the ski jump where the Olympic flame burned at both Games. Its present tower, sleek and curving, was designed by Zaha Hadid at the start of this century, and it has become one of the landmarks of the city.

Hadid's other work in Innsbruck is even easier to reach. In 2007 she designed the stations of the funicular that leaves from the city centre and climbs towards the Nordkette, flowing glass shells that look as if they had been poured rather than built. From the top of the cableways beyond them, more than two thousand metres up, you can look straight down on the city you were standing in a short while before. Few cities put the high mountains so close to their shops.

Out into the Tyrol

Beyond Innsbruck, the Tyrol opens out into valleys, lakes and small towns. The Achensee is the largest lake in the region, and it is known as the Tyrolean Sea. Rattenberg which is often described as the smallest town in Austria and is known for its glassblowers. To the east are Kitzbühel and the high country towards Salzburg.

Tours that include Innsbruck and the Tyrol

Travelsphere's seven-night Highlights of Austria: Mountains, Lakes and Spectacular Salzburg is the holiday in the catalogue that stops at Innsbruck. Its places include Munich, Innsbruck, Niederau, Lake Achensee, Rattenberg and Salzburg.

Just You's seven-night Tyrolean Treasures: Salzburg and the Austrian Alps does not list Innsbruck, but it covers the mountains east of it. Its places include Munich, Salzburg and the Königsee, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, the Krimml Waterfalls and Zeller-Fusch, Mondsee and Hallstatt, Kaprun and Zell am See, Kitzbühel and Maria Alm.

If you have a day in Innsbruck, start with the Golden Roof in the morning, when the sun is on it. Then take the funicular up towards the Nordkette, look down on the city, and come back down for a coffee in the old town, with the mountains at the end of the street.