Balzano Cathedral
Bozen
Italien

Botzen is famous for Ötzi, also called the icema, and they are showing the old dead body in a special museum, but expect the museum to be very crowded. The building is not very huge and I think that is the unique selling point, we would have to wait for an hour and is about 9 € per adult (August 2014).
According to the museum web page:

A visit to the museum takes about 1-2 hours.
The interior of the museum is easily accessible to disabled people.

So it is up to you if you want to wait.
The mumy was found 1991 in the Ötztal alps and scientiests assume that he was living around 3300 before christus. Funny fact: he was found by two german tourists, so if you walking around in the alps, watch carefully, you might find Ötzi 2.0.

Besides the museum, Balzano has some nice churches and older buildings that could be worth to check out.

The pedestrian zone is very very nice, lots of small shops with unique stuff (but also the big brands have their space), and you should save around two hours to give it a look.

If you plan to rest for a while have a look for the „Kornplatz“, with some nice wooden seats. Try to be there during market time so you can buy fresh and high quality stuff for a fair amount of money. According to this page the schedule is like following:

Fruits, vegetables, food, clothes, custome jewellery, items for home…

Monday: Piazza Don Bosco
Tuesday: Via Piacenza-Via Aslago
Thursday: Via Rovigo, Piazza Matteotti
Saturday: Piazza della Vittoria and surroundings

For parking you should give this one a try, it is pricewise fair and very central just next to the Balzano Cathedral

Italy:
Parcheggi Italia Spa
10/A Piazza Walther Von Der Vogelweide, Bolzano, BZ 39100
Italien

A little confusing is going back to the autobahn / motorway, if your GPs is recommending Balzano south / Bozen Süd, be careful. We ended on a

A nice spot it the Ponte Talerva, a bridge with some locks as a symbol of love and you can walk to the „Siegesdenkmal“ – „Monumento alla Vittoria“

Balzano love locks on a bridge

Recommendation!

Here is a new feature, an OpenStreetMap with most of the spots mentioned in the Blogpost.

[osm_map lat=“46.499″ lon=“11.353″ zoom=“15″ width=“600″ height=“450″ marker_file=“http://alexanderjaeger.de/osm/osm_marker_bozen.txt“]