Innsbruck is a capital city of Tyrol located in the very center of the Alps. It is primarily known as a center of winter sports including ski jumping. Each year, it is a host of one of the competitions of the Four Hills Tournament. Innsbruck is also famous for its perfectly-preserved medieval Old City and imperial palaces of the Habsburg Dynasty.
Peaks of the Alps, which large part is covered by snow even during the summer, towers above the city situated in the valley of Inn. It makes a beautiful panorama and encourages to explore mountains. The Alps can also be admired from the local peaks. Some of them, such as Nordkette, can be accessed by aerial tramways which allow getting at 2000 meters in a dozen minutes. In the winter, on the other hand, the entire area changes into a large skiing center where the Olympic Games took place twice, in 1964 and 1972.
Innsbruck does not only offer sports and mountains. The Old City with picturesque tenement houses and numerous restaurants consists of one of the three most important imperial residences in Austria - Hofburg - which presents interiors from different times with valuable furniture and artistic crafts. Outside the center, it is worth to visit Ambras Castle exhibiting a collection of paintings, furniture, weapons, and artistic crafts of the Habsburg Dynasty. There is also the court church where Austrian Emperor Maximilian I is buried, and the cathedral with tombstones of other members of the imperial family.
