Kronplatz

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Kronplatz
Kronplatz: south side

Kronplatz: south side

height 2275  m slm
location South Tyrol , Italy
Dominance 3.16 km →  Piz da Peres
Notch height 486 m ↓  Furkel Pass
Coordinates 46 ° 44 '17 "  N , 11 ° 57' 36"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 44 '17 "  N , 11 ° 57' 36"  E
Kronplatz (South Tyrol)
Kronplatz

The Kronplatz ( Plan de Corones in Ladin and Italian ) is a 2275 meter high mountain in South Tyrol ( Italy ), on the edge of the Dolomites . It is the local mountain of Bruneck and is a well-known ski area . This is part of the Dolomiti Superski network . "Kronplatz" is not only the name of the mountain, but also the holiday region around the mountain. The three municipalities of Bruneck, Enneberg and Olang border each other on the summit plateau of the mountain .

Northern view of the Kronplatz
View of Plan de Corones as seen from Schöneck Castle

The name Kronplatz is borrowed from the Ladin toponym Plan de Corones . In the Fanes legend , Plan de Corones is the place where Dolasilla , the invulnerable princess of the Fanes kingdom, was crowned.

In summer, when there is no skiing, the barren meadows serve as pastures for cattle. The few still untouched parts of the mountain have the forest cover typical of the Puster Valley .

Ski Area

Summit cross of the Kronplatz

historical development

Even before the First World War , the construction of a cable car from Bruneck to Plan de Corones was considered. This project could not be realized because of the war and the adverse conditions in the interwar period .

On January 19, 1938 the time had come again: At the meeting of the administrative board of “Funivia Dolomiti Monte Corona AG”, reports were made about its establishment and registration with the court. The commissioned project for the construction of a cable car failed due to difficulties in obtaining the financing loan of one million lire . In 1939, at a general meeting of the stock corporation, which was primarily concerned with dissolving it, it was decided to continue it for at least a year. In November 1939, after the start of the Second World War, the cable car company was dissolved.

When in the 1950s Willy Kofler, then President of the Bruneck Tourist Office, pushed for the development of the Kronplatz with a cable car, this failed again because of the lack of support from those circles that had the necessary capital. Success was only due to Ernst Fan and a group of Bruneck citizens who took up and launched the construction of the cable car again at the end of the 1950s.

In 1960 the "Kronplatz Seilbahn Genossenschaft mb H." was founded. The cooperative capital was 550,000 lire. In 1961 the cooperative was converted into a stock corporation ("Kronplatz Seilbahn AG Bruneck"). The company's capital was 1 million lire. When the first down payment for the construction of a material ropeway was made to the construction company "Gebrüder Reichegger" from Sand in Taufers on September 27, 1961 , there were still problems with the actual ropeway project, as it would have cost 283 million lire. In addition, the project was not given the green light by the Roman Ministry of Transport due to insufficient funding. You had to look elsewhere. As a result, several companies were invited to submit offers. In 1962 Ceretti & Tanfani SA (Milan) was awarded the contract, which demanded 137 million lire for the construction of the cable car.

At the beginning there were great difficulties, as only 38 percent of the subscribed share capital (100 million lire) had initially been paid in. Trento “Mediocredito” pledged a loan of 180 million lire. In addition, the Sparkasse Bruneck provided a transitional loan of 40 million.

In the early summer of 1963, the construction of the first ski lift “Belvedere” began. Despite various difficulties, this and the cable car could be put into operation in the Christmas season of 1963. This initiated the development of Bruneck's local mountain for winter sports, which resulted in a constant investment policy.

In the first winter of skiing, the income was disappointing. The only way to meet the obligations was to take out a loan of 125 million lire. When the financial collapse of the AG threatened in 1964, they turned to North Tyrol and received a loan of 5,000,000 ÖS . Further help followed.

The “Sonnenlift” was planned in 1967, and in the same year the completion of the mountain station including the restaurant was considered. From the winter of 1970/71 the 5.4 km long “New Year's Eve descent” could be skied. The work on the mountain station and the construction of the restaurant were completed in 1974.

The Kronplatz already experienced a brisk winter activity in the later 1960s. The “Belvedere”, “Ochsenalm”, “Korer”, “Marchner”, “Furkel” and “Alpen” ski lifts went into operation. The Plan de Corones developed into a high-flyer among the ski areas in Italy. In 1973 the ski area was so well known that the lifts were almost unable to cope with the onslaught. A new lift system from Reischach was supposed to relieve the pressure, and in 1973 it was decided to build the “Herrnegg chair lift” and the “Pramstall drag lift”.

In the mid-1970s the financial situation relaxed and a dividend was paid out for the first time in 13 years. One then went purposefully to the enhancement of the existing plants or to the replacement of them with more modern plants. In addition to the other modifications, it was also decided to replace the cable car with a modern orbit. It was a new development, ie the construction of two orbits that could be coupled to one another. It was possible to put both railways (Kronplatz I and II) into operation on schedule at the beginning of the winter of 1986/87. When it was commissioned, the system was one of the most powerful in the world (2,250 people per hour). Due to the increased transport capacity, there was inevitably a greater rush of skiers. The parking spaces at the valley station were no longer sufficient, so additional parking spaces had to be provided.

In 2000, the "Kronplatz 2000" lift went into operation, which runs parallel to the orbit. The "Herrnegg chairlift" was demolished. In 2003 "Kronplatz I and II" was replaced by a modern 8-seater gondola lift. The two orbits can transport 3,950 people per hour to Plan de Corones.

scope

Kronplatz: View to the east of the middle station of the Olang lift and the mountain station of the Arndt lift

The Kronplatz ski area offers a total of 114 kilometers of groomed slopes at altitudes between 920 and 2275 meters, which are served by a total of 32 lifts with a transport capacity of 66,362 people per hour. All ski slopes in the ski area can be artificially snowed by a total of 346 snow-making systems. It is therefore considered to be snow reliable. (As of August 2011)

The Kronplatz itself as the main mountain of the ski area has twelve modern gondola lifts as well as five chair lifts that lead up from three sides to the broad, tree-free summit in the upper part. Another eight gondola lifts and a chair lift are located on the other two mountains in the ski area, Piz da Peres and Piz de Plaies . The Piz da Peres is located in the immediate vicinity of Kronplatz to the south. In the south-west, the Piz de Plaies is connected by a connecting cable car that leads over the village of St. Vigil . In the ski area there are also six ski lifts on smaller ski slopes in the vicinity of Plan de Corones, which are spread over the Puster Valley, the Gsies Valley and the Antholz Valley and are not directly connected to the main area.

The Kronplatz offers five valley runs between 5 and 7 kilometers long:

  • two approx. 5 km long runs to Reischach in the direction of Bruneck (1160 m difference in altitude),
  • a 6.5 km long descent to Gassl in the direction of Olang (1110 m altitude difference),
  • a 6 km long descent to St. Vigil (1070 m altitude difference).
  • a 7 km long descent to Percha (1355 m altitude difference).
  • and a 2 km long black slope (500 m altitude difference) from Piz de Plaies to Piculin in Val Badia with a ski bus connection to Alta Badia .

Thanks to the use of numerous snow-making systems, the runs can be used until spring.

Kronplatz Seilbahn AG

Kronplatz Seilbahn AG is one of the three cable car companies that operate the lifts on Kronplatz. Sales in the 2006/2007 financial year amounted to a little more than 12 million euros, and earnings before taxes to 1 million euros. During the 2006/2007 financial year, the company had 15 permanent and 58 seasonal employees. The Board of Directors has ten members, the Supervisory Board three. The Chairman of the Board of Directors is (as of 2013) Werner Schönhuber.

With the "Project Ried", which provided for a new slope and a cable car to Percha , the Kronplatz Seilbahn AG sparked heated discussions in the neighboring villages around the Kronplatz. In an informal referendum in 2008 in Reischach, a parliamentary group from Bruneck, the population spoke out against the Ried project. Participation in the formal referendum in the municipality of Bruneck 2010 was below 40% and did not reach the quorum . The Ried project was approved by the South Tyrolean provincial government on December 15, 2008 after a positive environmental impact assessment. Commissioning took place in 2011.

Alpine Ski World Cup

A women's giant slalom has been held annually on the Erta slope in St. Vigil as part of the Alpine Ski World Cup since 2017. In the season 2016/17 won Federica Brignone , 2017/18 Viktoria Rebensburg and 2018/19 Mikaela Shiffrin .

Concordia 2000

Kronplatz

The ski pioneer Erich Kastlunger from St. Vigil suggested at the turn of the millennium that a large bell be erected on the summit plateau of Kronplatz. The project was given the green light after consultation with the various cable car companies. The artist Paul de Doss-Moroder from Ortisei in Val Gardena was commissioned to design the "Concordia 2000" peace bell. It was meant to be a token of thanks to everyone who helped build the ski mountain and serve as a memorial for unity and peace. The bell was installed in the top of the observation tower in the summer of 2003.

St. Sebastian Chapel

On the summit of the Kronplatz there is a mountain chapel , which was built in 1984 and consecrated to St. Sebastian , also known as the Kronplatz or Schützenkapelle . In 2018, the rifle associations of North and South Tyrol deposited a relic of Emperor Karl I , the last Habsburg ruler, in the chapel on the occasion of the centenary commemoration of the end of the First World War and the associated division of Tyrol .

Cycling

The 16th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2008 led on May 26th, 2008 in a 12.9 km long mountain time trial from St. Vigil to the Kronplatz. The 93rd edition of the Giro in 2010 also visited Kronplatz.

Messner Mountain Museum

The Messner Mountain Museum

On July 24, 2015, the extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner opened the MMM Corones on Kronplatz, the sixth and last part of his Messner Mountain Museum chain , in which the topic of 'climbing' is dealt with. The building was realized by the architect Zaha Hadid .

Lumen - Museum of Mountain Photography

On December 20, 2018 was at Plan de Corones, in the area of the architectural firm EM2 architect , the Museum of Mountain Photography converted old mountain station lumen opened.

Awards and reception

Kronplatz received the Ski Resort of the Year 2018 award in 2018 .

Mountain names

The clearly older Ladin name Plan de Corones could go back to an Alpine Romanesque * corōna meaning " rock terrace". The German abbreviation to Kron- resulted in a folk etymological interpretation as "Platz der Krone", a fade-in of the Fanes legend , in which the mountain is the coronation site of Dolasilla .

Historically, the highest point was also known as the Spitzhörnle , for example in the description by Ludwig Steub . Today only one pre-summit to the north-east is called Spitzhörnle or in Ladin language Col de Calzabörna (literally “ Blue Stump Bichl”).

See also

literature

  • Isolde von Mersi: Kronplatz: Ski mountain with a history. A chronicle. Bruneck: Dipdruck 2003.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dolomiti Superski: Kronplatz
  2. ^ Egon Kühebacher : The place names of South Tyrol and their history. Volume 3, Bozen: Athesia 2000. ISBN 88-8266-018-4 , p. 152.
  3. ↑ So also Lois Craffonara : <Kronplatz for lad. Plan de Corones is first found in Staffler 1844, p. 166: "the Hörnle or Kronplatz (in Marebbe Planta coronis [wrong word separation!])". It is wrong that Haller used the term Kronplatz as early as 1831. In Staffler's time, the name Kronplatz was probably still on shaky ground, because a little later in the same work on p. 279 we also read “Spitzhörnle or Platzkron [!!] (Plang de corones)”! Josef Thomas Haller spoke German and wrote in German; from 1817 to 1824 he was a judge in Enneberg, but did not yet know the German name Kronplatz, only "Die Schlichte". Johann Jakob Staffler , who had been head of the district in Pustertal since 1843 and worked in Bruneck, still shows great uncertainty (Kronplatz / Platzkron / Hörnle / Spitzhörnle). Both of them know Plan de Corones. Lad. Corones in this toponym clearly means 'terrain gradations', which on the Enneberger side existed in a very clearly defined form before the leveling work for the ski slopes and are still recognizable today. Carlo Battisti also noticed this geomorphological fact: "caratteristica per quattro ordini di balze". Lad. Corona 'console, wall board, cornice (above window / above door)' occurs several times as a metaphor in our toponomics as a term for a 'terrain gradation'. - On the other hand, Kühebacher's form and explanation is completely taken from the realm of fantasy: based on a form “Plang de Curunes” that does not exist in Marebbe and Val Badia, the meaning “mountain spirits” is conjured up for “curunes”! Kühebacher refers to the Engadin Andrea Schorta (Rätisches Namenbuch, vol. II, p. 250 ff.), Who is responsible for Graubünden, and not for Enneberg and the Gadertal, where a form of curunes was and is phonotactically impossible and therefore is never existed (quite apart from the invented meaning, which cannot be read even in Schorta, neither in the long article on planus (pp. 250 - 256) to which our author refers, nor in that on the etymon corona (p . 109), which Kühebacher does not mention at all!). Kronplatz did not have until the second half of the 19th century. began to gradually become known and only began to take hold with the construction of the Kronplatz shelter at the beginning of the 20th century. acquired some importance. But then the First World War came, so that the name was not generally accepted until the beginning of the 1920s. Old Brunico people have repeatedly confirmed this to me. Even Kühebacher admits that Kronplatz is a “phonetic alignment” with Ladin. That means that Plan de Corones is the endonym (the hood of the mountain belongs - as we have already said above - to the municipality of Marebbe), and Kronplatz a young exonym, which, however, was born in a completely innocent way in contrast to the imperialistic new creations of Tolomei. The German exonym thus has full right to exist. Around the middle of the last century, the poets came and had princes and princesses crowned on the Plan de Corones / Kronplatz, and our names were thus also given a folk etymological reinterpretation. Only when the mountain became more and more important for tourism in Brunico and as a ski area did it become the “Brunico local mountain”.
  4. ↑ Audi FIS Ski World Cup. Retrieved January 24, 2018 .
  5. ↑ 30 years of the Kronplatz Chapel (2014) . Accessed December 31, 2018
  6. ↑ Hannes Obermair : History blind South Tyrol? (Missing) cultures of remembrance 1918–2018 as a loss of critical awareness . In: Patrick Rina et al. (Ed.): 18/18: Alto Adige / Südtirol 1918–2018 . La Fabbrica del Tempo - The Time Factory, Bozen 2018, ISBN 978-88-943205-1-0 , p. 48–55, here: p. 48 ( researchgate.net ).
  7. ^ Kristin Hohenadel: A Brilliant Monument to Mountaineering and Architecture Embedded in the Italian Alps . Slate Magazine . 4th August 2015.
  8. ↑ Lumenmuseum website . Retrieved December 21, 2018.
  9. ↑ Meinrad Schmidli, January 8, 2019 at 3:26 pm: Ski Areas 2018 - Top 10 November 8, 2018, accessed on March 8, 2019 (German).
  10. ^ Johannes Ortner: South Tyrolean mountain names . In: Experience the mountains - The magazine of the Alpine Association of South Tyrol . No. 6 , 2019, pp. 50-51 .
  11. ↑ Mountain hike to the Spitzhörnle

Web links

Commons : Kronplatz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files