It was inhabited by the Raetian Isarci people and the Romans built a settlement there after the area was conquered in 15 BC by general Nero Claudius Drusus, after whom the settlement Pons Drusi ("Drusus Bridge") was named. The nearby village was called Bauzanum. With the end of the Roman empire a Bavarian immigration began and the first mention of a Bavarian count as ruler of Bolzano dates from 679. The area has been settled by German populations since then. Bolzano became an important trading point after its elevation to a town on 24 June 1190 by bishop Konrad of Trent owing to its location between the two major cities of Venice and Augsburg. Four times a year a market was held and traders came from the south and the north. The mercantile magistrate was therefore founded in 1635. Every market season two Italic and two Germanic officers (appointed from the traders who operated there) worked in this office. The city was a cultural crosspoint at that time and still is to this day.
Before World War I Bolzano was part of the Austro-Hungarian county of Tyrol. It was annexed by Italy at the end of World War I and on 1 January 1927 became a provincial capital. At the time of its annexation Bolzano was primarily a German-speaking city, with a pre-war population of 30,000 people. In the 1920s, along with the rest of the province, the city was subjected to an intensive Italianization programme under orders from Benito Mussolini. The aim was to outnumber the local German-speaking population by tripling the population with Italian-speaking immigrants drawn from the old provinces.
During World War II Bolzano was the site of the Nazi Bolzano Transit Camp, a concentration camp for Jews and political
