Primiero San Martino di Castrozza

Legend says there was a lake here. The Primiero basin was covered with water, closed in by the Pale di San Martino and the Vette Feltrine, and a single otter lived in it; tired of being alone, the otter patiently dug itself a way out at the bottom of the basin, the water rushed out and opened the Schenèr gorge. For having made the valley habitable, the otter ended up on the coats of arms of the comuni of the Primiero. Today's comune, on the other hand, was born on 1 January 2016 from the merger of Fiera di Primiero, Siror, Tonadico and Transacqua: at more than 200 square kilometres it is the largest in Trentino, and its name is the sum of two names, because San Martino di Castrozza comes from a castrum, a Roman camp on the Via Claudia Augusta, to which around the year one thousand the hospice of Saints Martin and Julian added the saint.

The valley governed itself early: in 1273 the community was granted statutes, with a council made up of the burgomasters of the four main regole and the bishop's officer, who was the captain of Castel Pietra at Tonadico. And Tonadico was the valley's chief place from the eleventh century to the fifteenth, when under the Welsperg the primacy passed to Fiera — the fair, the market — where the comune has its seat today. In 1349 Charles IV of Luxembourg, having taken Feltre, made the Primiero a jurisdiction and enfeoffed it to Bonifacio Lupi: from that year the Venetian pull ended and the valley passed to the counts of Tyrol, which the Habsburgs confirmed in 1373. Up at San Martino the hospice kept a community of friars until the early fifteenth century: they gave food, water and shelter to whoever came through.