Cermes

On the arms of Cermes there is a rampant fox, and it is not an animal chosen at random: it is the device of the lords of Fuchsberg, whose name means precisely fox mountain, and who were the feudal lords of the village from 1427 to 1832 — four centuries. The comune adopted it in 1966. Their house is still there: Castel Lebenberg, built in the thirteenth century by the lords of Marlengo and passed to the Fuchs von Fuchsberg in 1426, with a chapel on three floors made in the fourteenth century. The castle can be visited, and it is the thing seen from furthest away in this small village of the Burgraviato, squeezed between Lana, Marlengo and Merano.

The name, instead, has changed face a good many times: it appears as Cerones already in 857, then as Schirmis, Sermis, and at last Tscherms in 1380. Where it comes from is not clear: perhaps from a personal name, Cerus or Cerius, or perhaps from cembra, the Latin name, of pre-Roman origin, of the Swiss pine. A comune of its own, though, Cermes became late: it was part of Marlengo and broke away in 1897. From 1906 to 1950 the village was served by the tramway that ran from Lana to Merano. Among the trades, besides wooden furniture, there is that of the cooper, and it is no small detail: here they make wine. At the Kränzlhof, a wine estate of medieval origin belonging to the counts Pfeil, there is a labyrinth garden that since 2011 has hosted an art festival every year.