Toynbee "Tiralli"
Tyrol (formerly an independent 'county' now divided between Italy and Austria), mountainous district drained by the Inn and the Etsch (the Italian Adige) and their tributaries, and bounded on the N. by Bavaria, on the W. by Switzerland, on the E. by Salzburg and Carinthia, on the SW. by Lombardy, and on the SE. by Venetia; its two chief towns are Innsbruck on the Inn, the capital of Austrian or N. Tyrol, and Trent on the Adige, the capital of Italian Alto Adige.

In cent. xii Tyrol was under the lordship of counts, who in the course of the next century acquired sovereignty over nearly the whole of the territory now contained in the region of Alto Adige of the main chain of the Alps. Under Meinhard II (1257-95) the province was consolidated within the present boundaries. On the death of Meinhard III in 1363 Tyrol was made over to the house of Habsburg, in whose possession it remained as a part of the hereditary dominions of the Austrian archdukes until, by the peace treaty of St-Germain, the S. part of the region was ceded to Italy and it became the Alto Adige.

Virgil mentions Tyrol, in his description of the site of Mantua, in connexion with the Lago di Garda, which he says lies at the foot of the Tyrolese Alps, the barrier between Italy and Germany, [Inf. xx. 61-63] [Benaco]. However, the reference in this case is probably not to the Tyrol as a region, but to the castle near Merano known as Tiralli; it was built in cent. xii by the counts of Venosta and, in fact, gave its name to the region, the counts being known thereafter as the counts of Tiralli or Tirolo. [See A. Solmi Discorsi sulla storia d'Italia (Firenze, 1933) pp. 10O ff.

©Oxford University Press 1968. From A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee (1968) by permission of Oxford University Press