Maranzana

The name Maranzana is probably predial, born of a landholding, and the documents hand it down as a chain of forms: Marencanus at the end of the twelfth century, then Maranzana, Marenzana, Maransana, down to the form fixed no later than the sixteenth century; other scholars trace it to the Latin verb emereo or the personal name Emerentius. On the hilltop, in the middle of the village, the fourteenth-century castle survives well, with its towers and its wall; the municipal arms quarter six golden stars with a red-roofed tower.

Maranzana is the village of Giacomo Bove, the explorer who lived between 1852 and 1887 and whose house here is a museum. A naval officer, he was hydrographer of Nordenskiöld's Vega, the expedition that first completed the Northeast Passage, and later led the exploration of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Around the village the country is almost all vineyard, and the houses reach the edge of the Bosco delle Sorti park.