Gais is a comune (municipality) and a village in South Tyrol in northern Italy, located about 60 km north-east of the city of Bolzano.

Geography

As of 30 November 2010, it had a population of 3,162 and an area of 60.3 km2. Gais is one of the three communes of South Tyrol whose name, for the reason of sounding "romantic", remained unchanged by the early 20th century renaming programme which aimed at replacing mostly German place names with Italianised versions, the other two being Plaus and Lana. Gais borders the following municipalities: Bruneck, Sand in Taufers, Pfalzen, Percha, and Mühlwald.

Frazioni

The municipality of Gais contains the frazioni (subdivisions, mainly villages and hamlets) Lanebach (Lana di Gais), Mühlbach (Riomolino), Tesselberg (Montassilone) and Uttenheim (Villa Ottone).

History

Coat-of-arms

The emblem is party per bend or and azure with two bendlets azure; the remaining field represents a sable eagle with a halo and the head facing left. The eagle symbolizes John the Evangelist which the parish church is dedicated and the two azure bendlets the two castles Kehlburg and Neuhaus. The emblem was adopted in 1956.

International relations

Twin towns — Sister cities

Gais is twinned with:

Society

Linguistic distribution

According to the 2011 census, 97.05% of the population speak German, 2.65% Italian and 0.29% Ladin as first language.

Demographic evolution