East Tyrol

The area around the former Roman municipium of Aguntum was, from the 12th century, held by the Counts of Gorizia, who took their residence at Lienz and inherited the County of Tyrol in 1253.

While Tyrol was lost to the Austrian House of Habsburg in 1363, the Gorizian counts retained Lienz until the extinction of the line in 1500.

East Tyrol's present-day situation arose from the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I and its subsequent dissolution.

By the 1915 Treaty of London, the Kingdom of Italy, which had joined the victorious Triple Entente, was to obtain the Tyrolean lands south of the Brenner Pass, as claimed by the Italian irredentism movement.

In Austria, East Tyrol borders the federal states of Carinthia in the east and Salzburg in the north, while it also shares borders with the Italian provinces of South Tyrol (Alto Adige, northern part of the region Trentino-Alto Adige) in the west and Belluno (the region Veneto) in the south.