Segonzano

In 1495 Albrecht Dürer, on his way to Venice, had to go through the Val di Cembra because the Adige had burst its banks; and it is thanks to that flood that the castle of Segonzano was painted twice by him, along with a mill and a view of the valley taken from the church of San Rocco at Cembra. The castle had been built in 1216 by Rodolfo Scancio, of a family of ministeriales who served as the bishop's cupbearers: a document set in the Codex Vangianus invests him with the fief, formerly the prince-bishop of Trento's, and authorises him to build it. Above the village, meanwhile, stand the earth pyramids, which the dialect calls the Omèni de Segonzan: columns of earth and pebbles cut out by the rain, each with a block of porphyry on top for a hat.

The fief changed hands often, and once the price was paid by an office. In 1408 Enrico di Rottenburgo rebelled against the count of Tyrol Frederick IV; the rebellion put down, he lost his fiefs and died in 1412 without heirs, and the emperor Sigismund twice ordered Segonzano to pass to others — to the bishop, then to a count of Lupfen — and twice Frederick ignored the order. In 1424 the bishop of Trento, to save appearances at least, formally made the fief over to Frederick, but took from the lords of Segonzano the office of cupbearer, which went to the Thun. From 1535 the place belonged to the a Prato, barons from 1636, who held it until 1869. On 2 November 1796 a French column led by general Gaspard took the castle and was then driven back by the Austrians at Parlo and Piazzo; the castle, badly damaged, was never repaired, and was made safe only in 2006. The arms of 1930 keep the woodcutter's saw of the Scancio and the blue of Sevignano, the comune joined to Segonzano in 1928.