Cervino

Cervino was founded by charcoal burners. They came from Talanico, and after Suessola was destroyed by the Saracens they had taken refuge at Arienzo, where the land was narrow and not enough to feed them. Being of that trade, they found a strong attraction in this wild and wooded valley, which offered material in abundance: little by little they stopped there, made space by cutting the woods, pitched their tents, then their huts, then their houses. The name, though, is older than they were: it is traced to an ancient cult of Artemis-Diana, goddess of the hunt and of the woods, whose animal was the deer, and to the ruins of a temple of hers said to have stood here. On the municipal arms, granted in 1937, there is indeed a deer.

Becoming a municipality, on the other hand, took a long time. Petitions were made more than once and always refused, because of the opposition of Durazzano, which with Cervino's autonomy would have lost part of its own standing; the decree came only in 1807, and we know the date from an aside in the report by which a parish priest accounted for his own administration. When the question then arose of joining forces with Forchia, it was understood that two small municipalities would each lead a meagre life, and they were put together under a single name and a single motto: concordia parvae res crescunt, by concord small things grow. As for the town hall, until 1959 it never had a fixed home: it moved through six private buildings, one after another.