Besenello

Above the village rises the Scanuppia, and the concrete road that leads up to it is reckoned the hardest climb in Europe to face on a bicycle: an average gradient of 17% and a maximum of 43%. Besenello itself lies below, at the foot of a small hill on which stands Castel Beseno, the largest fortified structure in Trentino — and the village takes its name from the castle, of which it was a dependency. Where the castle's name comes from is disputed: perhaps from bis-sinus, the double bay, for two bends of a river; perhaps from bis amnis, the two rivers, for the two watercourses. In the old documents it is Besenum and Bisinum in Latin, Bisein and Pissein in German.

The arms, approved in 1987, carry four silver spheres, and they are said to stand for four comuni: besides Besenello, the neighbouring Calliano, Volano and Folgaria. Besenello, after all, has been joined and divided more than once: the name appears in the fifteenth century, when it was united with Calliano; then it was a gastaldia; then it was separated, and during the fascist period united with Calliano again — in 1929 the comune was suppressed and its lands put into a new comune called Beseno — only to be reconstituted in 1947. The church of Sant'Agata is Romanesque and documented from 1205, though what one sees is the result of a great rebuilding at the end of the nineteenth century: inside are the two tombstones of the counts Trapp, the last private owners of the castle, and two altars by the sculptor Cristoforo Benedetti. The hillside is planted with table and wine grapes, and its moscato became a DOC in 2010.