Specialty coffee in Bronzolo

The Isarco joins the Adige just above Bronzolo, and only from that point did the river carry enough water to float a boat — which is why navigation ended here and nobody went any further north. In a good year as many as 1,400 rafts set off from here; the timber went mainly to Venice, because Venice had no forests of its own and needed material for ships. Draft animals hauled the boats back upstream, and the boats then came down again carrying nothing but those animals — they were not allowed to take cargo. The whole trade was killed off by the railway from Verona to Bolzano in 1859; the customs house and a hundred and fifty meters of quay still stand by the river, protected as monuments only since 2024.