Roverè della Luna

Here the valley of the Adige narrows to two or three kilometres and forms the Chiusa di Salorno, between the Monte Alto to the east and the Monticello to the west, which stands above the village. For centuries that narrows was a natural barrier between the German-speaking and the Italian-speaking parts of the region, and it is traditionally taken as the boundary between the German language area and the Italian one. What that meant in practice is told by a date: in 1910 the pan-German associations of Tyrol — the Südmark, the Tiroler Volksbund, the Deutscher Schulverein — planned a German-language kindergarten at Roverè, in what the entry itself calls a strictly nationalistic logic. In German the village is called Aichholz.

The name comes from a bend: where the village stands the Adige once made a curve, a «luna», beside a wood of durmast oaks. That the houses should now actually draw a crescent is mere chance, for the borgo stretched out along its two main streets, and mostly in recent times; but the coincidence works, because seen from above and at night, from the castle of Salorno, the village is a crescent moon. Some also derive the name from the Bavarian lahn or laeun, which means avalanche. The arms, recognised in 1929, put the whole thing into one picture: above, a blue sky with the waxing crescent; below, on a field of gold, a durmast oak planted in a valley where you can make out the rocks of the mountain of Mezzocorona, the snow-covered Bondone and the course of the Adige in silver. And every year the village holds the feast of the trees: the primary schoolchildren gather at Pianizzia and each plants one.