The Olympic Village

The 1976 Olympic Village was built to the south of the 1964 Village, which was already housing local people by that time. The second phase of construction added 642 apartments to the existing 689. As planned, and as was the case with the 1964 Village, these apartments were made available to Innsbruck residents after the Olympic Winter Games ended.

Around 7,000 people of over 50 nationalities now live in Innsbruck’s Neu Arzl Olympic Village district. As multi-cultural now as it was when it hosted the world’s leading athletes, the Village boasts kindergartens, schools, sports and cultural clubs, health clinics, shops and a recently built five-floor nursing home. Its indoor swimming pool is much used by local families, while the walkway on the banks of the nearby River Inn is another popular recreation spot.

A 2015 study conducted by the University of Innsbruck revealed that the Village’s residents rate it as clean and safe and are happy with the quality of life there. The study’s findings are at odds with newspaper articles that have portrayed the area in a negative light because of the low average incomes of its residents and reported increases in crime and drug trafficking. The district is popularly known as the O-Dorf, an abbreviation of Olympische Dorf (German for “Olympic Village”). It is linked to the rest of the city by a bridge over the River Inn and is well served by buses, the city’s tram network and the regional rail network.

Housing was in short supply in Innsbruck for many years after the Second World War. More than half of the city’s residential buildings had been destroyed during the conflict, and the effects of this devastation were still a major issue as late as the 1960s. At Innsbruck 1964, therefore, the plan was for the inhabitants of substandard accommodation in another part of the city to move into the Village after the Games were over. By 1965, 6,000 people were living there.