Vermiglio

One of the hamlets of this comune is the Tonale pass, some ten kilometres higher up, which until 1918 was the state border between the Austro-Hungarian empire and the kingdom of Italy: on the pass stands the monument to the fallen of the First World War. The border, in other words, ran inside the communal territory, and that decided everything else. Along the road that climbs from the village to the pass one meets five Austrian fortifications built for that war — fort Saccarana, fort Mero, fort Velon, fort Strino and fort Presanella — and in the barracks of Vermiglio, in summer, two companies of the Landesschützen regiment of Bolzano were stationed. Of the war, though, the thing that touches the local people most closely is another: the people of Vermiglio were evacuated, and spent those years at Mitterndorf an der Fischa, near Vienna, hundreds of kilometres from home.

Today the wealth of the village is water, and it is used twice. The Vermigliana torrent, before crossing the built-up area, turns three turbines in the Stavel power station — the new plant was built beside the old one, which the elders still call the one inherited from the Todeschi — and since the summer of 2008 the same water is gathered and channelled again two kilometres further down, in a second plant that produces more electricity. The comune sells it to the grid, and that is an item of income. The village proper is made of three hamlets by now joined into one, Pizzano, Fraviano and Cortina, and it was called Armilla before becoming Vermiglio; the old coat of arms, granted in 1929, had an uprooted pine above three green hills, and the present one is of 1991. In winter there is cross-country skiing here on more than thirty kilometres of trails, and three times Vermiglio has hosted the Cyclo-cross World Cup: it was the only race of the season run entirely on snow, and the last was held in 2024.