Poggio Torriana

Poggio Torriana has existed since 1 January 2014 and before that it did not: it was born from the merger of Poggio Berni and Torriana, two comuni of the Marecchia valley which in 2013 began studying whether it was worth becoming one. The reasons were set down in black and white: cut administrative costs, improve services and stop being classed as «small comuni», that is under five thousand inhabitants — a category holding about seventy per cent of Italian comuni. On 6 October 2013 a consultative referendum was held asking two things at once: whether to merge, and what to call the new comune. Both passed by large majorities, and the name chosen was Poggio Torriana. In the provincial ranking by population, the figures said the new comune would come thirteenth, just behind San Clemente.

In practice, the two comuni became municipi and the seat is at Poggio Berni. The coat of arms, granted on 23 February 2015, invented nothing: it puts the emblems of the two villages together on the same shield, that is the Saint George killing the dragon of Poggio Berni and the towers with the walls of Torriana. The name, on the other hand, is a new word that exists only in Italian: in Romagnolo the two places go on being called what they have always been called, E Póz and Scurghèda, two names that resemble neither each other nor the comune that now contains them.