Cornedo all'Isarco

The name comes from the Latin cornus, the cornel tree, and in twelfth-century documents it appears as Corneit and Curneid; the modern German form, Karneyd, is read from 1477. Cornedo was an old judicial district of the county of Tyrol, administered on the prince's behalf by several noble houses, among them the Liechtenstein, who came from Laives: their insignia became the municipal coat of arms, and they coincide with the field of the arms of Laives. The place mattered above all because of a road: from the fourteenth century, thanks to the Kuntersweg, the Brenner route ran through the Isarco gorge at Cardano and no longer over the Renon.

At Cardano stands one of the largest hydroelectric plants in South Tyrol, recognisable from far off by the five penstocks running down the slope. The water comes from the Ponte Gardena dam, fifteen kilometres upstream, and drops one hundred and eighty-three metres. The plant entered service on the fifteenth of September 1929, and among those who worked on it were the Turin architect Eugenio Mollino and Luis Trenker, an architect and later a film director, together with his teacher Clemens Holzmeister. A sixth penstock has been dismantled: it fed two turbines that produced direct current for the railway, a traction system long since superseded.