The German name of this village, Welschnofen, contains a word that once served to tell people apart: welsch means someone who speaks a Romance language. A little further on lies Deutschnofen, Nova Ponente, and the two names make a pair — the Nova of the Latins and the Nova of the Germans — because what divided them was not the valley but the language. In the documents it is written plainly: Nofalatina in 1295, Noua latina in 1312, and only later Welschennofen. Nova comes from Latin and means recently cleared land, which is exactly what it was: the shepherds of the Val di Fassa came up to their summer pastures and at a certain point built houses to stay all year, winning ground from the wood. The community was Ladin, of the Badia type of speech, and remained so until the seventeenth century; then Germanisation happened by itself, century after century, and the original Ladin disappeared. Today more than nine inhabitants out of ten have German as their mother tongue: of the Ladin, the name of the village is what is left.
On the arms, adopted in 1967, there is a detail that raises a smile: two quarters carry the arms of judge Bartlmä von Pretzenberg, who had property here, and the other two are canting arms built on his surname, that is a pretzel resting on a mountain. The church too tells something: the present parish church is of 1967, because the nineteenth-century one was entirely dismantled in 1965, and the only thing spared was the bell tower, which with its thirty-seven metres is today the oldest structure in the village. Nova Levante became an autonomous comune only in 1870, when it separated from Cornedo all'Isarco, and its fortune began a few years later: in 1896 the alpinist Theodor Christomannos, who had fought for the road over the Costalunga pass, had the Grand Hotel Karersee built. The following year, for the visit of empress Elisabeth, the architects added a chapel; over the years Arthur Schnitzler, Karl May, Agatha Christie and Winston Churchill passed through. A little above lies the lake of Carezza.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Nova Levante
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
