Excavation area “oratorio Don Bosco, Via Prà delle Suore”

Aside from small prehistoric evidence (one flint blade) the oldest archaeological finds date back to 1200, where a high wall had been built around a humid area, more than 1000 square meters wide. This place was later called “Siechenwiese” (lawn of the sick) or “Lazarett” and some decades ago, for other reasons also “Kindergarten”.

In the course of time wooden edifices have been built in the inside, we find their remains, unfortunately soaked with ground water, in the lowest levels. There is a significant presence of wooden debris but also of canals made of thick, perfectly preserved tilings.

The excavated partition still contains the burials perpetrated since ancient times in the northern part of the area. It seems obvious that the surrounding edifices where used to hide away highly contagious or deadly ill people. Some objects even give prove of religious assistance.

Probably this describes the use made of that place up until the year 1512 when a great flood devastated Bressanone and damaged the area, which in fact had been built on wetlands.

Modest efforts of reuse until 1554 are testified by two coins of Philipp II (1554-1558) which were found in the pavement then again covered by alluvial soil.

The abandoned area remained in everybody’s mind as a place to avoid, but had been reused to bury dozens and dozens of corpses, thrown directly into the alluvial sands. Many of them were thrown face down or on their sides in a dishevelled position. We are most probably in front of a burial place used during the plague pandemic of 1629 (which continued through 1635), the one described by Manzoni for the city of Milan and which affected the whole continent.

A silver coin of Archduke Leopold V of Austria dating back to 1625-1632, found in connection to the area of the bones may have been in the pocket of one of the dead.

An additional flood, maybe the one of 1758 again devastated the area. Some graves and bones were displaced, some parts of the wall were torn down and others were washed free.

After these events the whole area has been cleaned of debris, drained and rebuilt. Three comfortable rooms resting on the old wall and provided with a perfect cobblestone floor were erected. After a few decades apparently the ground water level raised and the site was again abandoned. The ruins must have been visible throughout the first half of the twentieth century as the rooms were emptied from debris and filled with rubbish until being completely submerged and hidden.
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