Mezzocorona

The name has changed several times, and each time someone else decided it. It appears first in 1174 as Metze: Corona was the name of the castle now called San Gottardo, Mezzo that of the Rotaliana plain; some derive it instead from the dialect mez, «wet», because until the nineteenth century all this was marsh. From 1194, when the counts of Tyrol replaced the bishops of Trent, the village was called Mezzotedesco, German Metz, as against its sister Mezzolombardo which stayed with the bishops — and Mezzotedesco still appears on the cadastral maps of the mid-nineteenth century. On the twenty-ninth of February 1902 Vienna authorised the change to Mezocorona; today's spelling dates from 1924.

With the sister town across the Noce the accounts are still not settled: the people here are nicknamed Brusacristi, cross-burners, because they burned a cross that the people of Mezzolombardo had planted to mark the banks of the stream, and those of Mezzolombardo are the forcoloti because they came after them with pitchforks. The plain is the home of Teroldego, a grape born here; the rock wall above the village shelters it from the cold northern winds, which is why the vine does better here than round about.