Tavernole sul Mella

In this village the government of the whole valley used to meet. Having passed under the Serenissima in 1426, Tavernole housed throughout the Venetian centuries, in casa Fontana, the «general council of the valley», the body that held together the life of Val Trompia. Wealth, here, was iron: in the village there still stands an old smelting furnace, one of the few left in Europe, put back in order not many years ago and open to visitors. In 1850 a flood of the Mella devastated the valley and at Tavernole destroyed mills and forges, damaging the furnace as well. What remains in writing are the medieval statutes of Cimmo, among the oldest in the valley: they are of 1372 and were drawn up by don Bernardino de Caciis, archpriest of Inzino but a native of Cimmo. Already in the twelfth century, moreover, the comune of Cimmo was helping to build the pieve of Bovegno.

The present name is recent and comes from a merger that only half worked. In 1927 the comune was called Tavernole-Cimmo, when Pezzoro, Cimmo and Marmentino were joined to it; Marmentino became autonomous again in 1955 and since then the name has been Tavernole sul Mella. Pezzoro, at nine hundred and eleven metres, is reached from Lavone, which is in the comune of Pezzaze, because it lies on the other side of Mount Pergua: a frazione you get to by passing through another comune. The rest is told by dates: in 1826 the first girls' school of Cimmo was founded; on 2 August 1909 the tramway from Brescia arrived here, after ten years of work, and between 1910 and 1934 Tavernole was the northern terminus of the Val Trompia line; the church of Saints Philip and James was built between 1899 and 1901 to a design by the architect Carlo Melchiotti, while the medieval one of San Filastrio keeps fine paintings of the fifteenth century.