Cembra Lisignago

The comune was born on the first of January 2016 from the union of Cembra and Lisignago, and it was not the first time the two villages had been put together. Under the prince-bishopric of Trent they lay in the same jurisdiction, and the seat was Lisignago; then Meinhard II, count of Tyrol, took the sovereignty over the fief, and under him it was Cembra that replaced Lisignago as the seat of jurisdiction. In 1928 Lisignago was suppressed and aggregated to Cembra together with Faver; in 1952 both were detached and re-established as comuni of their own; and in 2016 Cembra and Lisignago went back together, this time carrying both names. The valley around is named after the main village, and the high ground has the Lago Santo and the peat bog of Lagabrun, where a rare beetle lives that has taken its name from the place.

The name appears for the first time as Fagitara Cimbra in Paul the Deacon, who lists it among the castles the Franks destroyed in 590. Where it comes from is disputed. The old connection with the Cimbri, the Germanic people who were supposed to have settled here after their defeat at Vercelli, is probably groundless; and the Simbri whom Strabo speaks of are in all likelihood a copying error for the Insubres. Other explanations bring in the Old High German zimbar, building timber — the valley in German is called Zimmerstal and the woodcutters here belonged to the Cimbrian minority — or else, according to Carlo Battisti, the stone pine, the pino cembro. On the Doss Caslir a bronze situla of the fourth century before Christ was found, with inscriptions in the Raetic-Etruscan alphabet. The church of San Rocco was built as an ex voto for the plague in 1519 and greatly enlarged with the plague of 1630. And on the twentieth of March 1797, while two thousand five hundred Croatian soldiers of the Austrian empire were quartered in the village, the French attacked from the other bank of the Avisio: nearby Faver was completely destroyed.