TRENT, City, Italy

Ital. Trento, Latin Tridentum, city (1991 pop. 101,545), capital of Trentino–Alto Adige and of Trent prov., N Italy, on the Adige River and on the road to the Brenner Pass. It is an industrial and tourist center. Manufactures include leather goods, machinery, metals, textiles, printed materials, and food products. Probably founded in the 4th cent. b.c., Trent was later the seat of a Lombard duchy (6th cent.) and of a Frankish march (8th cent.). To safeguard their road into Italy the emperors invested (11th cent.) the bishops of Trent with temporal powers over a sizable territory; a succession of prince-bishops ruled, except for a few short intervals, until 1802, when the bishopric was secularized and became a part of Tyrol in Austria. Because Trent had always been Italian in language and culture, there developed a strong movement for union with Italy (see irredentism). Union was achieved in 1919 by the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Among the city's monuments are the Lombard Romanesque cathedral; the Castello del Buon Consiglio (13th–16th cent.), once the episcopal residence, later a political prison, and now the seat of the National Museum; and a bronze statue of Dante Alighieri (1896). The Council of Trent met there in the 16th cent.

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