page_title: Alto Adige
section_title: Napoleon's Alto Adige
hierarchical_section_title: Alto Adige / Napoleon's Alto Adige
caption_attribution_description: English: Departements in Italy during Napoleonic rule (in 1811 precisely). Français&#160;: Les départements italiens sous le premier empire (en 1811 précisément). Italiano: Dipartimenti napoleonici italiani.
context_page_description: Alto Adige is the Italian name of an area around the Alps from where it is originated the second main river in northern Italy: the Adige. The history of the name indicates that the etymology comes from the river Adige, with "alto" meaning upper, because the upper part of the river flows through the province. The name was first created by the Napoleonic French to distinguish this Italian-speaking area from the Austrian empire's Tyrol, directly north.
context_section_description: During French control of the region, South Tyrol was officially named Haut Adige to get rid of relation to the historic "County of Tyrol" of Austria.
  The District of Alto Adige was created by Napoleon as part of the Dipartamento del Benaco in his Cisalpine Republic, and was near Verona. This Benaco department, created in 1797, was gotten rid of in 1798 as a result of administrative changes to the Cisalpine Republic.
  Some years later, Napoleon created the Department Alto Adige further north; this department was a part of the Kingdom of Italy from 1810 to 1814.
  It was created the Department of Alto Adige with the division of the Austrian Tyrol between French Bavaria and the Kingdom of Italy, and included the southern part of Germanized Tyrol with the city of Bolzano with surroundings (along with the Trentino).
  The boundaries were made by Austrian and German commissioners, saying that a territory would belong to the Kingdom of Italy if it is inhabited by Italians, according to the principle: "belonging to the Kingdom of Italy because inhabited by Italians" (da appartenersi al Regno d'Italia perché paese italiano ).
  This shows that Bolzano was a mostly Italian town in Napoleonic times, and that in the following century was "Germanized" (as in the 1911 Austrian census, Bolzano was mostly German-speaking, at almost 91%).
  Indeed, between the Renaissance and the 19th century, the whole area, originally populated by Latins from the time of Roman Empire, experienced a lot of Germanization. In the centuries before Napoleon, only the Dolomite's area of the western part of the present province of Bolzano (especially the Val Venosta near Merano) remained neolatin.
caption: "Department Haut-Adige" (1810)
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