Protestant Christ Church

Consecrated in 1908, the Protestant Christ Church in Bolzano was founded as a church for foreigners.

It was attended by health resort visitors who came to stay in the Bolzano suburb of Gries, often for months at a time. Foreigners, freemasons, Orthodox Church members and suicide who where forbidden from being buried in the Catholic town cemetery found their final resting place in its graveyard.

At the turn of the last century Bolzano was overshadowed by Merano as a health spa resort. Merano had become the playground of the Prussian, Russian and Austrian nobility and upper classes and a Protestant church was build there to cater for their spiritual needs in 1885, while visitors to the resort of Gries had to make do with a room in the assembly hall to hold their religious services.

Eventually a Hungarian resident of Bolzano bequeathed his villa and vineyard to the Protestant community. The vicarage was accomodated in the former villa and the church was build on the vineyard.