Caines

Caines — Kuens in German — is the smallest comune by area in the whole of Trentino-Alto Adige: under two square kilometres, at the mouth of the Passiria valley. It is so small that the municipal offices are not even in the village, but in the town hall of neighbouring Rifiano. The name appears as early as 720, written Cainina, and then in a string of forms — Cheines, Chains, Kaims, Kayns — down to today's German Kuens.

Its history, though, is Bavarian. In 718 the duke of Bavaria Grimoald gave this territory to the bishopric of Freising, and under bishop Corbinian a farmstead and a church were built here: tradition has it that the saint, passing this way on his journey to Rome, fell in love with the place to the point of buying land and planting vines and orchards. The bond with Freising lasted more than a thousand years — in 931 king Henry I even had to confirm it again, because the village was drifting away — and only in 1803, with the secularisation of church property, did Caines pass to the Tyrol. On the arms Corbinian still stands with his bear.