In the first, 1924, edition of Blue Guide Northern Italy, one of the Blue Guides best-selling titles over the 100 years that followed, the Hotel Elephant was the recommended hotel in Brixen Bressanone. Brixen is a beautiful gothic and baroque town in South Tyrol, the inn has been a welcoming guests for over 500 years, and was a rest stop for the eponymous elephant in December 1551.

A hundred years later the Blue Guide still recommends the Hotel Elephant. Below is the extract from the 2025 edition of Blue Guide Trentino & the South Tyrol.  (The explanation of the split of Blue Guide Northern Italy into its more manageable regions here»)

The story of the elephant is well told in detail in the hotel’s lobby: in short, a gift from King John of Portugal to Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the elephant travelled by sea (ship) and overland (on foot) from the south of India to Lisbon, across Spain, by ship again from Barcelona to Genoa, then, in the winter of 1551/2, over the Alps to Vienna, with one of his overnight stays being in Brixen on his way to the Brenner Pass.

Sadly Austria, where he was no doubt lonely and “kept and fed inappropriately”, was not greatly to his liking and he died after a couple of years at the relatively young elephant age of around 13. 

An elephant as a guest in a Tyrolean valley in the 16th century was a marketing opportunity not to be missed, crowds came from far and wide to see the extraordinary animal whose like had not been seen since Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants in his army in the third century BC, and the inn, now one of South Tyrol’s finest hotels, has kept the name Elephant ever since and continues to flourish.

The hotel is still Blue Guides recommended hotel in Brixen Bressanone.

Hotel Elpehant website »