San Quirino

On the arms of San Quirino, granted in 1986, there are two knights in full armour riding a single horse. Anyone who knows the history of the military orders recognises the image at once: it is the seal of the Templars, the two knights on one mount. It is not a heraldic whim. There was a Templar settlement here — the only documented one in the whole of Friuli-Venezia Giulia — identified thanks to documents that came to light in research carried on for years, and in the village more than one sign of that presence remains: one street is called via dei Templari, and along another there is a rock with inscriptions cut into it that concern them. A comune that chose to put on its shield neither a saint nor a tower, but the seal of an order dissolved seven centuries ago.

For the rest San Quirino is a village of the plain, with the hamlets of San Foca and Sedrano and the locality of Villotte, and it lies within the magredi, the lean and stony lands that the Cellina and the Meduna left behind as they came out of the mountains: a country poor in surface water, which has given the comune its agricultural vocation. The archpriestal church, dedicated to the saint who gives the village its name, was consecrated in 1869; not far off stands villa Cattaneo. Alongside Italian, Friulian is spoken here, in its western variety, and the comune falls within the area of protection of the Friulian language established by the Region in 2001. It is a village one crosses in a few minutes on the way to Pordenone, and which keeps its strangest piece of history cut into a stone and drawn on its coat of arms.