Ponderano

Two explanations of the name run side by side, both in the conditional. Tradition takes it from the Latin pondere aurum and from a ponderarium, a place where gold-bearing metals were weighed and officially certified. The other idea starts from a Pons Aerianus, from the personal name Aerius or Herius.

The town first appears on 16 March 882, in a document by which Charles the Fat gives the bishop of Vercelli the great court of Biella, to which Ponderano belonged. In 1404 the Avogadro, lords of the place, submitted to Savoy and undertook to defend the community and answer for it in all outside impositions: in exchange they asked twenty-eight florins a year.