In the city of Innsbruck, capital of the Bundesland Tirol, western Austria

 Andreas Hofer became a legendary figure to both Germans and Austrians. An early symbol of Austrian patriotism and German nationalism, his family was later granted noble status by the Austrian Emperors after Napoleon's downfall. A large statue of him stands in Innsbruck, and there is an annual dramatic presentation of his life and death in the Alps every year. The song "Zu Mantua in Banden," Tyrol's state anthem, is about Hofer; it contains his famous quote "I will not trade my life for a lie."

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(in the Eastern Alps of western Austria) The city of Innsbruck, capital of the Bundesland (federal state) Tirol, is found on the Inn River at the mouth of the Sill. First mentioned in 1180 as a small market town belonging to the Bavarian counts of Andech, it developed rapidly because of its strategic position at the junction of the great trade routes from Italy to Germany, via the Brenner Pass and from Switzerland and western Europe. The bridge (Brücke) over the Inn originally carried this traffic and gave the city its name. Innsbruck was chartered in 1239, passed to the Habsburgs in 1363, and in 1420 became the capital of Tirol and the ducal residence under Frederick, the duke “of the empty pockets.” Napoleon gave the city to the kingdom of Bavaria in 1806, and during the War of Liberation (1809) four battles were fought around Berg Isel, a hill immediately to the south, by Tirolian patriots led by Andreas Hofer against the Bavarians and the French.

+ Innsbruck's Old Town, with its beautiful doorways, narrow house fronts, buttressed medieval houses, arcaded facades, and oriel windows, maintains great examples of southern influences, Tyrolese architecture, and sumptuous Rococo, Baroque, and Renaissance buildings. One of the most famous buildings is the Fürstenburg, with a balcony that has a gilded copper roof, which was supposedly built by Duke Frederick and remodeled by the emperor Maximilian in about 1500. Other landmarks include the 18th-century Hofburg (on the site of a 15th-century ducal residence) and the 16th-century Franciscan, or Court, church containing the mausoleum dedicated to Maximilian I and the tombs of Andreas Hofer and other Tirolian heroes. The city's university was founded by Emperor Leopold I in 1677, and its library was a gift of the empress Maria Theresa in 1745. There are four major museums: the Ferdinandeum, the Tirolean Folk Art Museum, the Museum of the Imperial Rifles -- and collections of the archduke Ferdinand II, in the Castle Ambras. The semicircular quarter of the Old Town, ringed by paths called Graben, is currently a pedestrian area where visitors can review 800 years of local history. The Cathedral of St. James, which was formerly St. James Church Parish, was elevated to cathedral status in 1964. Popular for its dome over the choir and imposing twin-towered west front, it was designed in the Baroque style in 1724, and fully reconstructed after being destroyed during World War II.