About

Civic Archives of Bolzano-Bozen
Portici-Lauben 30
I-39100 Bolzano-Bozen

Website: www.comune.bolzano.it/archiviostorico
E-Mail: archiviostorico@comune.bolzano.it

Bolzano-Bozen's Town Registers
of the Council at a glance

The objectives of this project are to produce a digital edition of Bolzano-Bozen's Town Registers of the premodern era - the so-called ‚Ratsprotokolle' or 'Ratschlagbücher', to disseminate knowledge of this valuable material and to enable further research to be undertaken, as a result of the availability and accessibility of this resource.

Altogether, the digitisation of the Town Registers provides a deep insight into Bolzano-Bozen's life in the past, i. e. into a „world we have lost" (P. Laslett) and its families and classes, communities and power rules.

From the 15th century onwards the town of Bolzano-Bozen was allowed to govern itself by the Habsburgian rulers. Hence, the city government could rely on its own Council, strengthened by a privilege granted by King Frederick III in 1442. The Council was guided by a mayor whose election took place annually. The Town registers of the Council's discussions and advices were registered in book form; today these records lie at the core of what we know about the townspeople's economical, social and political life in the late middle ages and the early modern period. To further widen our knowledge of how this everyday life was like, it is central to make digitally accessible all the records surviving from that period.


(Last revised March 2019)

Sources and Further Reading: