Bergisel Ski Jump: Does It Still Work, and What Happens There Today

The white ski jump tower on the hill south of Innsbruck’s old town is easy to photograph and easy to misread. Visitors assume it is a relic — something built for the 1964 or 1976 Olympics and kept standing as a monument. It isn’t. The structure on Bergisel today is a working sports venue, rebuilt in 2002, and it hosts a full-scale international competition every January. This page is about what the jump actually does now, who built it, and how to visit it whether or not a competition is running.

A working jump, not a museum piece

Ski jumping has taken place on Bergisel since the early twentieth century, and an older jump on this hill was the Olympic venue in both 1964 and 1976. That structure was eventually judged too dated for modern competition, and in the early 2000s it was demolished and replaced. The tower standing today opened in 2002. It is not a restoration or a refurbishment of the older jump — it is a new building on the same hillside, built to current competition standards for the in-run, the take-off table and the judging infrastructure that elite ski jumping now requires.

That distinction matters because it explains why Bergisel is still active. A jump built to host events in 1964 would not meet today’s technical requirements. The 2002 tower was designed from the outset as a venue that could keep competing for international fixtures, not as a heritage piece to be looked at from below. It succeeded: Bergisel remains one of the four venues on the sport’s most prestigious annual circuit.

Zaha Hadid’s tower, and its twin across the valley

The architect commissioned for the 2002 rebuild was Zaha Hadid, and the tower is one of her more recognisable early completed works — a curved, cantilevered concrete-and-steel form that reads as much as a piece of architecture as it does sports infrastructure. The in-run sits inside a long sweeping shaft; at the top, a café and viewing platform project out from the tower on a form that has been compared to a filling station or a ship’s bridge depending on who is describing it.

What tends to surprise first-time visitors to Innsbruck is that Hadid’s Bergisel tower is not a one-off in this city. Five years after the ski jump opened, in 2007, she also designed the stations for the Hungerburgbahn funicular, the line that carries the first stage of the journey up to the Nordkette.

The two projects share a visual language — the same fluid, glacier-like white forms — and they are visible from each other across the Inn valley on a clear day. Few cities of Innsbruck’s size have two completed Zaha Hadid buildings; fewer still have them positioned so that a visitor can stand at one and see the other. Anyone touring the funicular stations on the same trip can read more in our guide to the Hungerburgbahn’s Zaha Hadid stations.

The Four Hills Tournament, every January

The reason Bergisel still matters competitively is the Four Hills Tournament, a series of four ski jumping events held in quick succession each winter across two countries: two legs in Germany and two in Austria. Innsbruck’s round is fixed in the calendar for early January, and it draws elite jumpers from the sport’s top federations along with a genuinely large crowd — tens of thousands over the event days, filling the standing terraces that run down the hillside facing the landing slope.

For a visitor who happens to be in Tyrol in early January, this is one of the more distinctive things to see in the region: a major international sports fixture staged inside the city limits, reachable by local bus, with the ski jump tower itself as the backdrop. Outside those few competition days, the same hill is quiet and open for ordinary sightseeing.

A few practical points worth knowing if a January trip might coincide with the tournament:

Aspect	Competition days	Rest of the year
Access	Ticketed event, often sold out in advance	Open visitor ticket, no advance booking required
Crowds	Large, city-wide atmosphere	Typically quiet
What’s open	Full arena, terraces, event infrastructure	Tower, viewing platform, café
Best for	Watching competitive jumping live	Photography, views, understanding the venue

Competition tickets are handled separately from the standard sightseeing ticket described below, and they are priced and allocated differently, so it is worth checking the tournament’s own event calendar well ahead of a January visit rather than assuming a same-day ticket will be available.

Visiting outside competition dates

On non-competition days, Bergisel functions as a standalone attraction. A lift inside the tower carries visitors up past the level of the in-run to a viewing platform, with a café and restaurant a short distance further up. From the platform, the view runs back over the roofs of the old town to the Nordkette ridge on the far side of the valley — a different angle on the city than the one visitors get from the mountain lifts looking down.

a standard entry ticket to the Bergisel Olympia ski jump arena covers the lift and the viewing platform and is the simplest way to see the tower without a competition running. For visitors who want the technical and historical detail explained on site rather than picked up from information boards, a private guided tour of the ski jump with tickets included covers the same ground with a guide who can walk through the 2002 rebuild, the judging system and the tournament’s format.

Bergisel also turns up on wider city tours that treat it as one stop among several rather than the sole destination. A segway city tour that includes brunch at the Bergisel Schanze is one option for combining the hill with a broader loop of the city on wheels rather than on foot, and it suits visitors who want Bergisel folded into a half-day itinerary rather than treated as a dedicated outing.

Das Tirol Panorama, and the battle it is actually about

At the foot of the tower, built into the hillside, sits Das Tirol Panorama — a museum built around a single, enormous circular painting more than a thousand square metres in size, depicting the Battle of Bergisel of 1809. Because the museum shares the hill and the name with the ski jump, visitors sometimes assume the painting has something to do with the Olympics or with ski jumping history. It doesn’t.

The Battle of Bergisel was fought in 1809, more than a century before organised ski jumping arrived on this hillside, during the Tyrolean Rebellion against Bavarian and French rule. Andreas Hofer, the rebellion’s best-known leader, commanded Tyrolean militia in a series of engagements against occupying forces on this exact hill, and the panorama painting depicts one of the largest of those clashes in exhaustive, wraparound detail. It is a nineteenth-century historical event, unconnected to the ski jump, the funicular, or the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics that later took place on the same slope.

Keeping the two apart matters for anyone piecing together Innsbruck’s history from a single hillside: this is one hill carrying three unrelated stories layered on top of each other — an 1809 battle, a mid-twentieth-century Olympic venue, and a 2002 architectural rebuild that still hosts competitive sport. The panorama and the tower are usually visited together, given their shared location, and Das Tirol Panorama is covered in full in its own guide.

Where Bergisel fits with the rest of Olympic Innsbruck

This page deliberately stays narrow: it covers what the jump is, who built the current tower, and what happens there today. Bergisel is only one part of a larger Olympic story that runs through Innsbruck twice over, in 1964 and 1976, plus the Youth Olympic Games in 2012 — that fuller history, including how the city carries its Olympic identity beyond this one hillside, is covered separately in our guide to Innsbruck’s Olympic history.

For anyone assembling a walking route around Bergisel and central Innsbruck, the hill sits an easy bus ride or a longer uphill walk from the old town, close enough to combine with a morning at the Golden Roof or an afternoon toward the Hofburg. Travellers building a full day around the imperial quarter and Bergisel together may find our Golden Roof and imperial quarter walking guide useful for the rest of the day’s route.

Practical notes for a visit

Bergisel is reachable from the city centre by regional bus in a matter of minutes, or on foot via a signposted uphill route through residential streets and woodland that takes roughly 30-40 minutes from the old town. There is no need to time a visit around weather in the way a Nordkette trip demands: the tower’s viewing platform and the panorama museum are both indoor-adjacent experiences, largely unaffected by cloud or rain, which makes Bergisel a reasonable fallback on a day when the high mountains are socked in.

The site is open across most of the year, with the ski jump itself remaining a genuine sporting facility rather than a static exhibit — training sessions and smaller events can also occur outside the January tournament window, so it is not unusual to see jumpers using the in-run on an ordinary weekday. Photographers should note that the platform faces back toward the old town and the Nordkette, making early morning and late afternoon light the most rewarding times to go up, independent of whether any jumping activity is taking place below.

For visitors weighing up how to spend limited time in Innsbruck, Bergisel earns its place less because of its Olympic pedigree and more because it is still doing the job it was rebuilt to do: hosting real competitive ski jumping, on a design by one of the most recognisable architects of the last three decades, on a hill that was already carrying a very different piece of history two hundred years before anyone thought to jump off it.

Bergisel ski jump and Four Hills Tournament: frequently asked questions

Is the Bergisel ski jump still used for competitions?

Yes. It hosts a round of the Four Hills Tournament every January, drawing international ski jumpers and large crowds to Innsbruck for a few days.

Who designed the current Bergisel tower?

Zaha Hadid designed the tower that opened in 2002, replacing an older jump structure. She also designed the Hungerburgbahn funicular stations, completed in 2007, making Bergisel and the Hungerburgbahn a linked pair of Zaha Hadid buildings in the same city.

Can I visit the ski jump when there is no competition?

Yes. A lift inside the tower takes visitors up to a viewing platform and a café-restaurant, open on a regular daily schedule most of the year, independent of the competition calendar.

Is Bergisel connected to the Battle of Bergisel in 1809?

The hill carries that name because of the 1809 battle, but the battle and the ski jump are unrelated events separated by more than a century. Das Tirol Panorama, at the foot of the jump, houses a circular painting of the battle, not of any Olympic or ski jumping history.

Was the Bergisel jump built for the Olympics?

An earlier jump on the same hill was used for the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. The tower standing today is a 2002 rebuild by Zaha Hadid and is a different structure, though it sits on the same site and is still used for elite competition.

How long does a visit to the ski jump take?

Around 45 minutes to an hour for the tower and viewing platform alone, longer if combined with Das Tirol Panorama at its base, which most visitors see the same afternoon.

Do I need a ticket in advance for the Four Hills Tournament?

Competition-day tickets sell out well ahead of January and are priced separately from the regular visitor ticket to the tower. Regular sightseeing visits do not need advance booking to the same degree.