Mezzolombardo

The name of this town is a border. In 1194 the settlement was split off from Mezzocorona: this half stayed with the bishopric of Trento, the other passed to Tyrolean territory, and from then on they were Mezzolombardo — Welschmetz in German, from welsch, the word for people of Romance speech — and Mezzotedesco, the German one. Earlier it had also been called Mezzo di San Pietro, after the castle. The division has never been forgotten: on this side the inhabitants are called Forcoloti, on the other Brusacristi, and the story goes that the first came at the second with pitchforks while those were burning a crucifix on the boundary between the two.

The town lies between two gates. To the north-west is the Rocchetta, the point where the Piana Rotaliana ends and the Val di Non begins: the Austro-Hungarians put a fort there, of which very little is left, eaten away by roadworks. To the south is the Rupe, the industrial quarter, which grew around a plant treating the fluorite from the region's mines and was later cleaned up; there is a biotope beside it now. Even the railway tells of a technical border: the line up the Val di Sole is narrow gauge, and the last stretch into the station was laid with three rails so that two different gauges could share it.