Sluderno

In the attic of the parish church of Sluderno lives a colony of greater horseshoe bats, that is of one of the most endangered bat species in Europe. It is not a presence grudgingly tolerated: since the spring of 2012 the comune has been running a project to safeguard them, and a group of biologists keeps the colony under constant watch. It is a coexistence that says something about this village of the Val Venosta: the church serves for worship below and for animals above, and the second has become as much a public commitment as the first. The name of the village, for that matter, comes from still water: attested as Sluderns in 1163, it is probably pre-Roman and derives from a word meaning marsh.

On the arms, adopted in 1967, there are two figures that go together better than they seem to. In the silver half there is half a torture wheel, broken, with blue blades: it is the sign of Saint Catherine, patron of the village, whose wheel according to tradition shattered. In the red half there is a golden sheaf of wheat, because this land has lived on cereals. Above the village stands Castel Coira, of the thirteenth century, property of the Trapp family: inside is one of the most important collections of armour in Europe. And since 2005, on an area of fifteen hectares, the medieval games have been held, a historical reconstruction that runs from the first century to the late Middle Ages with more than five hundred actors from all over Europe: the Quintana with its knights, the concerts, the birds of prey, the gladiator school, the Roman chariot race, and also a place of torture, an execution with the water guillotine and a trial for witchcraft. Sluderno is also a knot of roads: here cross the one coming down from the Stelvio, the one leading to the Swiss border at Tubre and the one climbing to the Resia pass.