German towns in northern Italy

You might want to look at a roadmap of Northern Italy--south of Innsbruck. The names of the towns may give you the info.

I remember going thru customs at the Brenner Pass--coming back into Austria back in 1970. The guards' first language obviously was German. They spoke Italian too. Walking down the aisle of our bus, one looked at a couple of black girls and said, "Africanos?" They appeared to be racists of sorts--for the time.

Google Südtirol in German or Alto Adige in Italian
Most places do have a German speaking majority there

But since Mussolini many Italian speakers have settled in that area formerly belonging to Austria before WW1

https://www.suedtirol.info/de/de/information/ueber-suedtirol/sprachenvielfalt

https://www.suedtirol.info/en/en/information/about-south-tyrol/language-diversity

One year we had spent 3 weeks in northern Italy and were wishing for some cooler temperatures and different cuisine so we hopped on a train and headed north from Venice to the a sweet spot in Italy where the town names and signage is in Italian and German. We went to Merano/Meran, a charming baroque spa city. Every menu had a combination of Italian and Austrian food on the menus. The wines were great and the bier improved. There are 3 such cities in this pre Alp region and more small towns. The largest cities that may check your boxes are Merano/Meran, Bolzano/Bozen and Bressola/Brixen. Can you further let the forum know if you are interested in anything else besides language?

Look at a map. Most places north of Bolzano nearly everyone can speak German, and often they do so before Italian.

The whole area used to be Austria, so the culture is quite Austrian.

Toured the Italian Dolomites in late October into mid November. The South Tyrol and Trentino regions have a high concentration of German speaking residents. Additionally, there is a wonderful area where Ladin is spoken. All of this is in addition to Italian speaking inhabitants. We spent time in Bolzano, Trento and other areas where the local guides educated our group on the history and culture - fascinating, heartbreaking, and heartwarming emotions were evoked.

With few exceptions you find people speaking German (in fact an Austrian dialect) in the province of Bolzano/Bolzen. So in every town and village within that province you find mostly people talk German (sometimes as a first language), or with a strong German accent.

Thank you all for the information. Mona- we are looking for language, culture and cuisine. We usually like to go to smaller quaint towns and do a lot of walking (shopping, restaurants, sightseeing ). I’ll do my research . We are always open for more suggestions! Thanks.

Dan,

You might have a look at Castelrotto / Kastelruth as I found the language to be primarily German there. It's a beautiful smaller town and there are good hiking and sightseeing opportunities in the area.

One afternoon during my stay there, some kind of local celebration was being held, and that included a large beer garden. I tried using my limited Italian with the young servers but someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "they don't learn Italian until later in high school". Many people there seemed to be able to speak English so I had no problems.

I don't know if it's actually helpful but the famous Italian novel written in Tuscan, The Betrothed (Promessi Sposi) ranges from Milan to Switzerland. I found it heavy going, but it's an historical romance.

If you are looking for smaller quaint towns to visit consider Sterzing (Vipiteno in Italian) in the north of South Tyrol. Beautiful architecture. The Abbey of Novacella is also nearby. It is a historic gem and also one of the world's oldest wineries. After Novacella, you could then visit Brixen (Bressanone), which beams with medieval charm and has the largest cathedral in South Tyrol. Here's a good trip planning resource for the region: https://throneandvine.com/

We have spent considerable time in this area, specifically in the Val Gardena (Italian name) and the charming town of Ortisei/St. Ulrich. The neighboring towns of Santa Cristina and Selva are also delightful. There is a wonderful combination of Italian cuisine and Tyrolean architecture, orderliness, and culture. Many folks are quadri-lingual: German, Italian, Ladin, and English.

You can do extensive hikes or pleasant walks, visit the Alpe di Siusi, see amazing mountain vistas, visit a neighboring valley. It’s a great base, only an hour by bus from the Bolzano train station.

If you want to investigate further, the Statistical Institute of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano South Tyrol / Alto Adige publishes statistics on the distribution of the three languages in all towns and villages.
https://astat.provinz.bz.it/downloads/mit38_2012.pdf

The document is written in Italian and German and based on data from year 2011. Table 2 (pages 6 and 7) should be easy to understand. The table is sorted alphabetically by Italian name and shows the percentage of Italian, German and Ladin speaking population.

Very interesting document. Paul, thank you!

As I noted in my first post, you basically need to be north of Bolzano to get to majority German-first speaking areas. Bolzano itself is 75% Italian-first.

The Pustertal Valley towns in particular are still quite German.

The linguistic border is at Salorno/Salurn in the Adige valley, so well south of Bolzano. Only five municipalities have an Italian majority, Bolzano and four villages; Bolzano due to immigration, Salorno was in the Trento province and Bronzolo was Italian speaking even under Austrian rule.

Bolzano itself is 75% Italian-first

My friend in Ortisei told me (in Italian) “Good luck in Bolzano at the hospital if you don’t speak German.” Her languages are, in order of preference, Ladin, German, Italian, with a barely divulged smattering on English. She is a native of the Val Gardena.

I have had conversations in Bolzano where I spoke Italian and the other person spoke German and we managed (since I have a barely divulged smattering of German).

This topic has been fascinating to me. I was in total ignorance of the language of Ladin, and then looking that up brought me to Romansh and Friulian! Who knew!? How interesting the world is…..

"The linguistic border is at Salorno/Salurn in the Adige valley, so
well south of Bolzano."

"My friend in Ortisei told me (in Italian) 'Good luck in Bolzano at
the hospital if you don’t speak German.'"

When I wrote "Bolzano itself is 75% Italian-first" I was simply repeating the 2011 statistics provided by our German friend above. Same for the observation that dominantly German-first towns are far more prominent in the Northern part of Alto Adige. This does accord with my experience, but my assertions rely on the above linked census data. I assume that survey participants do accurately report their language usage.

The hospital being a tough place to speak, Italian is interesting. Most people in general in that area are at least bilingual, German and Italian. And healthcare providers, even if for some reason they are coming from Germany/Austria to work in Italy, are notoriously bilingual/ multilingual. Even in the United States, health care providers are some of the most bilingual career tracks - they often actively work to learn foreign languages to accommodate the communities they serve.

So it's curious to me that a hospital in a highly bilingual part of Europe, staffed by generally bi or multilingual Europeans, doesn't speak the language that nearly 75% of the local community speaks. Wild. I wonder why?

As for the OP's request of where to go for German speaking towns in Italy, I still stand on the recommendation of farther north than Bolzano.

The statistics related to Bolzano are true and they are justified by the huge immigration of Italians (especially from Veneto region) promoted by Mussolini in an attempt to "italianize" the main cities of South Tyrol. As result, in Bolzano the majority of the population speaks Italian rather than German while in small villages and in the countryside the situation is the opposite.
In any case, in south Tyrol, Italian is taught in school and it is used together with German in public institutions so I hardly believe that the hospital staff only speaks German.
Leaving aside the case of public institutions such as hospitals, libraries etc., it is true that, sometimes, if you interact with a local using Italian, he pretends not to understand even if he knows the language and it is partially true that children learn Italian when only when they start school.
The case of Ladin is interesting because that's what in the rest of Italy would be improperly called a "dialect" but, because of the special status of Trentino - alto Adige region, this minority language is preserved and taught in school as part of the local cultural heritage; Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the rest of regional languages of Italy that are dying out, but that's another story...

Well, Bolzano is fairly south in Alto Adige/South Tyrol, so obviously most German speaking towns are north of Bolzano. But for example Caldaro/Kaltern is south of Bolzano and German speaking. I remember asking for a coffee in Italian there and waiting forever, then asking again - not so gently - in German and being served immediately.

There are two unmarked but historical borders: till 1918 Austria/Hungary ruled the land as south as Ala, that was the border railway station. But Trento province was Italian speaking, and the linguistic border was at Salorno - the situation was very much the opposite of the present one, with Italian towns and villages under Austrian rule. Cortina was Italian speaking but Austrian, after the war it was assigned to Veneto. The Italian speaking Alcide De Gasperi, born in the Trento province in 1881, began his parliamentary work in Vienna and Innsbruck, he arrived at the Italian parliament in 1922 and after 1945 he was seven times the Italian PM.

All the people working in public workplaces in Alto Adige/South Tyrol (schools, post offices, railways, hospitals, physicians) have to get a "patentino", that is an examination in languages to be sure they can speak and understand both Italian and German. I have witnessed some strange things happening, for example a famous soprano that could not get a teaching post at Bolzano music conservatory as she was not deemed fluent enough in German, so she had to accept a tenure from the music Hochschule in Dresden, Germany. And I suspect that some people (only a small minority) declare their language to be the most convenient one (for example Ladins have more advantages due to their minority status).

A lot of medical people in South Tyrol have studied in Innsbruck, that has a very large medical university. No medical studies in Bolzano, and only limited curriculum in Trento (the complete medical school is in Verona); doctors from Italian schools elsewhere would have to be fluent in German and this is not so common. This explains why the hospital people in Bolzano speak German. - Add to the equation that if you are a doctor assigned to a small South Tyrol valley you have to be fluent not in standard German but in the local dialect.

This topic has been fascinating to me. I was in total ignorance of the language of Ladin, and then looking that up brought me to Romansh and Friulian! Who knew!? How interesting the world is…..

Ladin is considered as being a relative of the Swiss Romansch and Friulan. As a speaker of Italian, that is a neo-Latin language as well, I find Ladin quite easy to understand, not so different from some Veneto dialects. RAI3 TV channel has a daily news program in Ladin that I follow when I am on holiday; it is not so difficult for Italians, but of course their main focus are things happening in Ortisei where the tv studio is. It would be difficult to be more local.

Friulan is a hard nut to crack, but I have little experience in it. Written Romansch is relatively easy to understand, but spoken one is difficult. I remember doing some shopping in Disentis, Switzerland, one of the centers of Romansch, and it was difficult even to tell if the sales assistants were speaking Romansch, Swiss German or what. It was completely mixed. At the supermarket I got a resounding DANKA!! (Thank you, "Danke" in German but with a Romansch declination).

All these languages are witnessing that the Alpine eastern area was Latin speaking in the middle ages, German came later, but some unconnected zones were left with languages slowly deviating from Latin.

It is best to refer to the area as “German speaking” rather than German, as the people in the Sud Tirol are not from Germany.