Ruinen auf dem Hügel Castelfeder

A breath of prehistoric, Roman and early medieval history drifts over the Castelfeder hill near Montan in the Unterland. The vivid traces, experiences and adventures of ancient peoples can almost be felt at this legendary site. Even thousands of years ago, the hill was a strategic refuge and lookout point for settlers who had made their home in the Unterland. The hill holds settlement traces from the Stone Age and Bronze Age. In the Castelfeder settlement itself, urn graves, burnt-offering sites and grave goods from the second millennium BC have been found. Around the year 500, a Byzantine fortress was built up here, and its strikingly thin protective wall survives to this day. It is astonishing what architectural mastery was achieved here – building an extremely stable wall with as little effort as possible. The remains of the former 500-meter-long ring wall, the so-called "Kuchelen," recall the construction methods of the Constantinople city walls. The hill, strewn with impressive ruins, is the actual upper castle, meaning the higher part of the castle complex, which bears an early medieval fortress – by the way, the largest in the castle-rich Etsch Valley. Which castle exactly it was is still disputed, but it is assumed to be the Castrum Ennemase. Because of its sparse, Mediterranean vegetation, romantic poets gave the hill the nickname "Arcadia of Tyrol." Today it is under landscape protection: anyone walking the nature trail toward the history of this ruin can be impressed by animals and plants that elsewhere have become only history.