San Genesio Atesino

San Genesio stands on the Salto plateau above Bolzano, and one gets there by road or by cable car in about ten minutes: a mountain village that looks at the city from close up. The relationship between the two places, though, may be closer than that, and run in the direction one would not expect. The market of San Genesio is documented at Bolzano from 1208, and it has been suggested that this city market was not born in the city at all, but descends from the fair that grew up here around the patronage of the mountain saint, which would be its natural predecessor. If that is so, the commercial institution of the larger place would be the child of a village feast on the plateau.

The communal coat of arms is a family's calendar: it is the insignia of the lords of Goldegg, who lived in the village from 1190 to 1473, and the comune adopted it in 1966, almost five centuries after those lords had gone. The name of the village is documented as mons Sancti Genesii as early as 1186 and comes from the saint to whom the church is dedicated; the hamlet of Avigna, on the other hand, is said to be named from the Latin a via, by the road. On the plateau open the earth pyramids, columns of sediment left standing after the last glaciation, and across it runs the European path E5, the one linking Lake Constance to the Adriatic: whoever walks it crosses this comune on foot, as people did before there was a cable car.