The history of Tyrol - experience step by step

Updated 17.08.2022

A certain curiosity for history, eyes for nature and a love of hiking are good omens for a special theatre experience in the Ötztal.

Duke Friedl of Tyrol flees to the countryside, over passes and mountains from the Ötztal to Meran to Castle Tyrol. This year it will be performed for the last time.

Duke Friedrich IV did not set out from Constance to South Tyrol in 1416 out of love for nature. During the Council, where three popes were fighting over the office at the same time, he bet on the wrong pope. The duke is banned from the church and persecuted by the king. He flees from Constance to Merano, having to cross yokes and mountains. Anyone who sees him may kill him. However, Friedl is popular with the Tyrolean middle class and peasants, who hide him and help him escape.

These exciting moments of Tyrolean history are performed in the Ötztal - more precisely in Vent - by the artists' group Lawine Torrèn as the travelling theatre "Friedl with the Empty Bag". A small crowd of 50 spectators experiences this story live along a wide hiking trail. By means of small headphones, dialogues and the medieval music are conveyed up close. Sometimes from a great distance, sometimes the fellow hikers stand directly on stage, right next to the performers.

Nature, as Friedrich and his fellow fugitives found it more than 600 years ago, is still so untouched and touching today. So beautiful, so powerful, so gentle in equal measure, so fragile and yet so dangerous, so full of adventure and history. The theatre lasts from 8:45 a.m. to about 1 p.m., after which you can stop at the Martin-Busch-Hütte and sit with the actors and director Hubert Lepka, ask questions about the story, and how the actors always manage to get to the scene before the visitors. The approximately 10-kilometre walk is done in nine stages, with just as many play locations on the programme.

Theplay will be performed from 8 to 18 September from Thursday to Sunday, i.e.a total of 8 performances. The performance starts in Vent at 8:45 a.m. at the Fried-Hütte near Hotel Vent.

Information and tickets at: www.vent.at/wandertheater-friedl