Photo by Leo-setä (flickr)

Innsbruck, Austria, host of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympic Games has a fairly straightforward name. You see, there’s a river, the river Inn, and there’s a bridge over the river. In Austria they speak German, and the German word for bridge is brücke, so, Innsbruck means, simply “Bridge over the Inn.”

Innsbruck is at an historically important crossing point for the river Inn, it is the easiest way across the Alps by land, (these days an airplane is pretty easy too). In Roman times it was called Oeni Pontum which is Latin for Inn, (Oeni), bridge, (pontum), so, it seems that Innsbruck has always been called Innsbruck, at least in whatever language was being used at the moment.

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