Pralormo

Pralormo joins two Latin words, pratum ad ulmum, the elm meadow, likely from a Lombard habit of planting trees at symbolic points. The last monumental elm stood at the corner of via Carlo Morbelli and piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, until lightning felled it in the early twentieth century. Two photographs of the day hang in the council chamber, framed with its bark.

Outside the village, the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine della Spina began, they say, with an image of the Virgin on a wayside pillar: a thorn scratched one eye and it bled. In 1585 the bishop of Asti found crowds, many reported miracles and two altars where mass was said.