San Martino in Passiria

The coat of arms of this village says two things about the people who have lived here: there is a halberd, which stands for the privileges once granted to the free peasants, and there is a wheel, for the craft tradition and the industriousness of the place. Free peasants with privileges are no small matter in a valley of mountain farms, and the halberd is their receipt. The name is attested as Passyr in 1078, as S. Martini in 1148, as Sand Martein in 1340 and S. Martin in 1341: first the valley, then the saint. San Martino is today the de facto chief town of the Val Passiria, and each of its hamlets carries two names, the German one and the Italian one — Saltaus and Saltusio, Ried and Novale, Flon and Vallone, Matatz and Montaccio.

At Saltusio stands one of the barriers of the Alpine Wall, the line of fortifications built in South Tyrol, and something unusual has happened to those works: works two and three have been reshaped by the artist Matthias Schönweger into the BunCor, the «heart bunker», in memory of the fires of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the ones lit on the mountains of these valleys. A military work meant to close a valley has become the monument to a devotion celebrated with fire in the open air. The trade that sits in the wheel of the arms, meanwhile, is still here: the making of art furniture and traditional country furnishings is well known. And the cycle path that runs through the village goes down from San Leonardo to Merano, from where one can carry on towards Bolzano or climb up to the Resia pass.