Gardone Val Trompia

Gardone Val Trompia lies in the middle Val Trompia, on the Mella, and its arms say at once what the town lives on: on red, two rifles with fixed bayonets crossed over an anvil and a hammer. In 1553 the Venetian podestà Catarin Zen complained to the Senate that everyone in the valley carried harquebuses, and that the men of Gardone were not content with one: even the women carried two, one in hand and one at the belt.

In 1794 Pietro De Lama, passing through, called the place a home of Cyclopes and described the forges along the Mella, where water drove the machinery, men stocked the guns and women smoothed and browned the barrels. The commune took its present shape in 1927, when Inzino and Magno were joined to it; the Beretta gun works has its seat here, and the title of city added a five-towered mural crown to the arms.