Fino del Monte

The village bears the name of a family, and for two centuries everyone here bore it too. The Da Fin came down at the end of the thirteenth century in the pay of an emperor, built a castle on the north wall of the Val Borlezza and made shops and houses grow around the keep; the most prominent of them, Venturino, gave his surname to the place and to those who lived in it, so much so that people with a different surname appear only from the end of the fourteenth century. In 1381 Fino obtained the title of municipality, and the family received from the Holy Roman Empire the black eagle on a gold field, which is still the municipal coat of arms, together with exemption from imperial tribute. The second name, del Monte, is on the other hand very recent: it was added by royal decree on 28 June 1863.

The wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines ruined the Da Fin. The weightiest members emigrated to Venice, to Trieste and to Cremona, and those who stayed fell into poverty: so much so that one of them, the Franciscan friar Leone, founded a charitable trust for his own relatives who had fallen on hard times, with rules fixed by a deed of 7 June 1459 and reserved to descendants of the family alone. In 1906 the parish priest was still listing the eight surnames into which those descendants had by then divided. In 1596 the Venetian captain Giovanni Da Lezze counted four hundred and fifty-two people here, a quarter of whom went down to Venice every winter to work wool and carry loads, out of poverty. In the middle of the square stood an elm centuries old under which the assemblies were held: the square is still called Olmo.