© Hegel Goutier
Innsbruck: where the shadows shine more than the light
Innsbruck: where the shadows shine more than the light
A long way from the image of rural austerity with which Tyrol is sometimes saddled outside its frontiers, the region’s capital, Innsbruck, is a city of high culture, a place which invites the visitor to wander around aimlessly, in a reverie of romanticism. This is a city where in winter the atmosphere is sometimes even warmer and more laden with fantasy than in summer.
In winter, the ring of mountains that surrounds each valley seems to tighten its hold. The inhabitants of what is, in spite of its small-town appearance, something of a cultural metropolis, take flight. And not only at the weekend. Each day as twilight begins to fall on the city they set out to scale the heights of the neighbourhoods and villages surrounding the city, or simply to look out into the distance. The city is a real hive of activity, with people climbing right from the centre of town, hanging onto the walls of the valley before taking refuge at night in the restaurants and country-style taverns of every neighbourhood.
Some people even ski down from these snow-covered mountain pastures right to their homes. Others prefer just to stroll along the length of the uproarious main thoroughfare, the Maria Theresien Strasse. It is itself a compendium of Austria’s architectural dynamism, blending state-of-the-art glass structures with the most refined classicism, not to mention the fantasies of the local form of art nouveau, ‘Jugendstil’, with its wonderful stained-glass windows and graphite work.
A beautiful escape
Come the weekend, the towering mountains become an obsession. The most prized of the peaks, and one of the most spellbinding, is the Hafelekar mountain, now easily accessible via a new superfast cable car, which is itself a futurist work by the architect Zaha Hadid. The cable car links the Hungerburg area first with a lower station, where the views over the city are already spectacular, and then with another, right up to the highest point at over 2,300 metres, looking out over alpine massifs as far as the horizon. It is possible to descend from there on a choice of ski pistes, from thoroughly safe to as adventurous as they come.
Others prefer to head towards the picturesque village of St. Sigmund, to slide around in the winter sunshine, or laze on a Tyrolean luge, sharing in the favourite pastime of local children. This little trip costs them no more than the price of their public transport season ticket. For tourists, it is included in the cost of the Innsbruck City Card, which grants access to all the city’s museums and historical monuments, as well as the tourist attractions in the countryside around. The venue of the Winter Olympics, at Bergisel, offers another easy escape from the city and a stunning view of Innsbruck and its surroundings, in addition to the most thrilling springboard for ski jumping.
The very laziest of visitors, on the other hand, can stay in Innsbruck and just stroll along the banks of the river Inn. The whole of the lower town cries out to be visited, from the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof) to the palace of the Habsburgs. Neither should the innumerable museums be forgotten, in particular the Tiroler Volkskuntmuseum (Museum of Tyrolean Folk Art), even if you normally avoid this type of place. In Innsbruck there is no room for mere vapid decoration, or for the condescending attitudes of the aesthete. What there is here is centuries of beautiful art, and the refined skills of the valleys’ artisans are in evidence everywhere, such as, for example, in the Hofkirche (Court Church), with its extravagant mausoleum of Maximilian I.
A cornucopia of emotions
It is quite likely that the visitor to Innsbruck will be lucky enough to chance upon one of the city’s wonderful festivals, such as the Osterfestival Tirol (www.osterfestival.at), with its thoroughly eclectic programme, or perhaps a specialised festival like the Tanzsommer (‘Dance Summer’, www.tanzsommer.at), all of which offer a very tempting array of attractions.
The city’s art galleries, too, are of very high quality, and there are a huge number considering the population is only a little more than 100,000. Some of these galleries are groundbreaking, too: the Taxispalais (www.galerieimtaxispalais.at), for example, under the management of Beate Ermacora, would certainly not be out of place in the largest metropolis.
When The Courier was passing through, this gallery was showing what has probably been one of the most original exhibitions of the season in Europe. Kirstine Roepstorff’s “Illuminating Shadows” is, at the same time, a presentation of individual pieces, and a display where each group – paintings, sculptures, games of light – is an installation in itself. The artist has incorporated into her collection a number of traditional African works of art, in a kind of marriage or one-to-one encounter in the midst of which the viewer loses all awareness of the origins of these pieces, so intense is the dialogue between them. The projection of the real or virtual gaseous filters which cover her paintings, the shadows that are transposed from one piece onto another, and the mechanisms of light where all the artifice behind them is forgotten, leave one in a state of wonder and awaken a cornucopia of sensual pleasure for the eyes and a whole gamut of emotions. Could this perhaps be a work that will prove to be the harbinger of a romanticism of the future?