Lavis has 8,636 inhabitants some ten kilometres north of Trento, where the Avisio torrent comes out of the Val di Cembra and runs into the Adige. The town did not take its name from the official form of the river but from the way people say it: in the Trentino dialect the Avisio is la Vìs, and the village grown on its banks became Lavis. On the hill above, the hamlet of Pressano keeps another old idea in its name, that of the locus praesanus, the "healthy place": up there you were far from the marshes of the valley floor, and indeed the oldest settlements all lie high up.
For almost three centuries Lavis governed itself with a vicinia. The assembly of the "vicini", summoned by the ringing of the bell, decided on the use of the fields and the alpine pastures, on the cutting of the woods and how to share out the timber, on the upkeep of roads, bridges and churches. The written rule, the charter of the community of Lavis, Pressano and their partners, is dated 1526, and it was confirmed by Maria Theresa of Austria in 1746 and by Joseph II in 1783. At the head stood the regolano, elected every year by rotation down the list of property owners: the office could not stay with anybody. At the mouth of the Avisio, meanwhile, a wetland of about a hundred hectares survives, one of the few stretches of river never straightened in the whole Trentino valley floor.
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📅 Every year, on 8 September, linked to the community's 1702 vow
Lavis celebrates the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 September, an occasion linked to a vow made by the community in 1702. In spring the Fiera della Lazzera is held, an old fair marked by numerous stalls.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Lavis, but an easy day trip away.
