Perosa Argentina

"Perosa" comes from peira, which in Occitan means stone: the stony road, the one paved with cobbles. "Argentina" comes instead from the silver mines on the slopes of Monte Bocciarda. The arms hold both together: three silver stones on black, with the motto Dant fructus lapides, "stones bear fruit".

By the late thirteenth century there were so many Waldensians in the valley that in 1297 an inquisitor was sent to Perosa. Threats, fines, confiscations and torture were not enough: ninety years later, in 1387, the inquisitor Antonio di Settimo complained that people here not only held to the heresy but carried it into the neighbouring valleys. Later, those forced to emigrate founded a village in Germany called Perouse.