Cavalese

Cavalese is the seat of the Magnifica Comunità di Fiemme, and always has been. The valley lay under the prince-bishops of Trent from 1026, but from 1111 it obtained a wide autonomy through the Comunità, whose palace, built by the bishops to lodge their vicars and to serve as a summer residence, became its seat in 1810; its arms, six white and red bands beneath a cross, were granted to it in 1588 by cardinal Ludovico Madruzzo. On the ground floor of the palace the prisons can still be visited, and the archive keeps parchments from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century.

The most telling place, though, is out of doors: at the pieve, under an old lime tree, stone benches stand in a circle around a stone table. This is the Banc de la Reson, the bench of reason, and it marks where the prince-bishop's vicar periodically administered justice. The bell tower of San Sebastiano doubles as the civic tower, and at its foot, since 1739, a statue of Saint John Nepomuk has stood to protect the village from the floods of the Gambis. The Cermis cable car, above the town, was the scene of two disasters, in 1976 and in 1998.