Massimeno

Massimeno is the least inhabited municipality in Trentino-Alto Adige. The village has not always stood where it does now: the old settlement was higher up, where the ground around the church of San Giovanni is still called Castèl, and it was destroyed — by a landslide, some say, or by fire. Fire came back in 1969, burning some of the old houses: the village square is wide because those houses are gone.

Above the village stands the chapel of San Giovanni Battista, decorated in 1534 by Simone Baschenis, the Bergamo painter who five years later would paint his famous Dance of Death at Pinzolo. From here, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many knife grinders — the moleti — left for England, the United States, Argentina and Australia: some came back, and the descendants of others are still there. In the arms are the waterfall of Lares and martagon lilies.