San Martino in Badia

Here more than nine inhabitants out of ten have Ladin as their first language, and this is no folkloric detail: San Martino in Badia is the place where Ladin is studied and preserved. In the castle that dominates the village — Ciastel de Tor in Ladin, Schloss Thurn in German, Castel Tor in Italian — is the seat of the Museum Ladin, the museum of Ladin history and culture; and in the village there is also the Ladin Institute «Micurà de Rü». Every place here, after all, has three names: the comune is San Martin de Tor, San Martino in Badia and Sankt Martin in Thurn, and the same goes for its hamlets — Antermëia, Antermoia, Untermoi; Lungiarü, Longiarù, Campill; Picolin, Piccolino, Pikolein. Between 1923 and 1928, on the other hand, the comune was called simply San Martino: the other two thirds of the name had been taken away.

The coat of arms tells who was in charge. It is quartered: in the first there is a silver tower with a blue roof on a black ground, standing for Castel Tor and taken from the insignia of a local family; in the second a silver cross above three green mountains, recalling that the comune was once a seat of jurisdiction, that is that justice was administered here; the third and fourth quarters are simply green and black. The old documents too have left their layer of names: Sant Martin in Geder in 1260, Sand Martein in 1334, St. Martin an der Gader as late as 1883. And the group of farmsteads of Seres, which form a very characteristic whole, appears already as «Cerre» in a document of 1177 by which pope Alexander III assigned it to the monastery of Novacella.