The area of Lienz had been settled since the
Bronze Age about 2000 BC.
Celtic people lived here from about 300 BC on, mainly as
miners, who came under control of the
Roman Empire in 15 BC. The area was incorporated into the
province of
Noricum and Emperor
Claudius had a
municipium called
Aguntum erected near Lienz in the today's municipality of
Dölsach.
Aguntum became the see of an
Early Christian bishop in the 5th century but decayed during the
Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps and the subsequent fights with the
Bavarii under Duke
Tassilo I around 600. Part of the Slavic principality of
Carantania, the area passed under
Bavarian and finally
Frankish suzerainty during the 8th century. Lienz itself was first mentioned as
Luenzina in a deed issued by the
Bishop of Brixen about 1030. The settlement itself, together with neighbouring
Patriasdorf, then belonged of the
Patriarchs of Aquileia, who were elevated to
immediate landlords by Emperor
Henry IV in 1077. It was then purchased by the scions of the
Meinhardiner dynasty, who held the office of Aquileian (reeves) and chose Lienz as a residence. From about 1127 they called themselves
Counts of Görz (
Gorizia). Located on the important trade route from
Venzone in
Friuli to
Salzburg, the
market town of Lienz received
city rights on 25 February 1242. In 1278 the Counts finished
Burg Bruck, a castle that until 1500 served as their local seat. When the Meinhardiner became extinct in 1500 upon the death of Count
Leonhard of Gorizia, their estates were bequeathed to the
Habsburg King
Maximilian I and finally incorporated into the
County of Tyrol. From the status of a princely residence, Lienz sank to the insignificance of a provincial town within the
Habsburg monarchy. During the
Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars, Lienz was occupied twice by
French troops in 1797. After the
Austrian defeat at the
Battle of Austerlitz, Lienz with Tyrol passed to the newly elevated
Kingdom of Bavaria according to the 1805
Peace of Pressburg. In 1809 it became the administrative centre of a district within the short-lived Napoleonic
Illyrian Provinces, but was reconquered by Austrian troops in 1813. Within the Austrian Empire (the
Cisleithanian part of
Austria-Hungary after 1867) it was the seat of the district of the same name, one of the 21 in
Tyrol. In November 1918 it was occupied by the Italian Army. After
World War I the southern parts of the Tyrol (i.e.
Trentino and
South Tyrol) were awarded to the
Kingdom of Italy under the terms of the
London Pact and the 1919
Treaty of Saint-Germain, making the Lienz district of East Tyrol an
exclave with no territorial connection to the mainland of
North Tyrol. After the 1938 of the
Federal State of Austria into
Nazi Germany, the Lienz district became a part of (
Carinthia). On
8 May 1945 British forces occupied Lienz, which together with Carinthia and
Styria became part of the
British occupation zone. At this time several thousand members of the former
1st Cossack Division coming from
Yugoslavia arrived in and around Lienz. They surrendered to the British troops but
were forcibly handed over to the
Soviet Union, where most were executed or sent to the
Gulag. ==Climate==