Cercino

The name probably comes from the Latin querciulinus, the little oak, but the coat of arms plays a different game: it shows three stylised cercini, the rolls of cloth people put on their heads to carry loads. In the papers the village is Zerzuno, then Cerzuno, at least until the fourteenth century; already in 822 a document says these lands belonged to the monks of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, and in 1415 Cercino broke away from the pieve of Sorico to make a parish of its own.

Then came the Thirty Years' War. In 1624 the village had four hundred and eighty-five inhabitants; the following year, on the plain below the houses, the imperial troops of Pappenheim clashed with the French and Albanian-Croat troops of colonel Milander, and with the forced billeting of the lansquenets, between 1629 and 1630, came the plague, which returned a few years later and cut the population almost in half. In 1637 the consuls of Cercino and of the neighbouring villages were set to building, maintaining and then destroying the fort of Mantello. What put the village back on its feet was the vine: by 1797 there were six hundred and thirty-six inhabitants.