The Gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle

The botanical gardens with their four thematic gardens (forest gardens, sun gardens, water and terrace gardens as well as the thematic gardens on the landscapes of South Tyrol) with 80 different garden landscapes cover a total area of 12 hectares.

Here you can see over 200,000 blooming tulips in spring. They open the garden season on the first of April. Then, until the beginning of November, there are countless other botanical beauties to discover. They are Meran's crowd puller par excellence: the botanical gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle, nestled on the sun-drenched hillside of Labers.
To really see everything, you should take a whole day, so large is the complex and so diverse the different garden worlds. Tip: Visit the gardens also outside the classic visiting hours, when there are often very large crowds - the gardens also offer numerous morning and evening events.

In the center of the botanical gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle is the castle itself, which, in addition to a restaurant, houses the Touriseum. Its old and venerable rooms, in which Emperor Franz Josef and his wife, Empress Sissi, already resided, now serve as the premises for the Museum of Tourism. The Touriseum, as its name suggests, offers a permanent exhibition on tourism in South Tyrol.
The exhibition focuses on tourism in Merano and South Tyrol and offers exciting insights, which range from the beginnings of tourism to the total digitalization of hotels and vacation activities.

Below the castle, surrounded by palm trees, lies the large water lily pond with the pavilion on the shore. On warm summer evenings, evening concerts are held there, the Garden Nights, in which numerous internationally renowned artists have already performed.

The Thun'sche Gucker, named after its creator Matteo Thun, a viewing platform in the shape of a pair of binoculars high above the gardens themselves, provides a slight sense of vertigo for even some.