Trento

Trento, city, Trentino–Alto Adige/Südtirol regione (region), northern Italy. It lies along the Adige River, south of Bolzano.

Trento was founded, according to the classical savant Pliny the Elder and the geographer Strabo of Amaseia, by the Raetians, and it became a Roman colony and military base on the road north to the Reschen (Resia) and Brenner (Brennero) passes. Its first bishop, St. Vigilius, converted Trentino and the southern Tirol to Christianity in the late 4th–early 5th century. The seat of a Lombard duchy and later of a Frankish march (borderland), it became a dominion of its prince-bishops in 1027 under Holy Roman imperial patronage and later became famous as the site of the ecumenical Council of Trent (1545–63). Under French control during the Napoleonic Wars, it passed to Austria in 1814. Trento’s population has long been an Italian-speaking one, and, after the creation of a unified Italy in the 1860s, the city became a center of irredentist agitation that was ruthlessly suppressed by the Austrian authorities. Trento became part of Italy in 1918. The city was badly flooded in 1966.

Important monuments of the Roman period include the remains of a theatre and of town walls. The city’s austere cathedral (consecrated 1145) and the churches of Sant’ Apollinare and San Lorenzo are in the Romanesque style. Notable Renaissance buildings include numerous mansions, the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore (1520), and the Castello del Buon Consiglio. The latter, dating from the 13th century, served as the seat of the prince-bishops from the 15th century; in 1528–36 a palace and splendid Renaissance courtyard were added to the castle, which is now a national museum.

Trento has light mechanical, textile, printing, tanning, and furniture industries; garden vegetables and fruit are cultivated locally. Pop. (2011) mun. 114,198; (2014 est.) mun., 117,304.