Ventasso

Ventasso is not the name of a village: it is the name of a mountain. The comune came into being on the first of January 2016 from the merger of four comuni of the upper Reggio Apennines — Busana, Collagna, Ligonchio and Ramiseto — which had already been working together for years in their union, and the name was chosen by the referendum of the previous May, which passed in all four villages. It does not point to a place, but to Monte Ventasso, which stands at the centre of the territory and comes close to seventeen hundred metres. The town hall is at Cervarezza Terme, and the statute set up four municipi, one for each of the territories of the old comuni; the arms too, granted a few years later, hold the four earlier coats of arms together.

It is the largest comune by surface in the province of Reggio Emilia, and at its birth it was the widest comune born of a merger in Italy; today it is the third. The territory runs from the valleys of the Ozola, the Secchia and the Enza to the Apennine ridge, where it borders on Tuscany, and it makes up the greater part of the national park of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. The mountain that gives the name is not even the highest peak: that is Monte Prado, which passes two thousand metres. Inside there are holiday places for summer and for winter — Ligonchio, Cerreto Laghi, Cervarezza Terme, Succiso — and a breed of horse that takes its name from here, the Ventasso horse, rustic, hardy and frugal.