Trento

Italy

Trento, Latin Tridentum, German Trient, English Trent, 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 centre 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.