Volano

There are three hypotheses about the name, and the most convincing is supported by an argument that lies somewhere else. The first takes it from the Latin abellana, the hazelnut, for the hazels that grew in the area, and it is backed by documents of the late twelfth century that call the village Avolano or Avolani. Another, little credited, brings in some Latin patronymics. The third leans towards a Celtic origin, from Vo-Land, «land near the river»: and the proof is not at Volano, it is a few kilometres away, where two hamlets of the comune of Avio are called Vo Destro and Vo Sinistro and still stand hard against the Adige — while Volano, until a few centuries ago, was lapped by the bends of that same river. The first mention of the place, in any case, is an old one: it is in Paul the Deacon, in the Historia Langobardorum, and dates from 590.

The two chief festivals of Volano rest on two coincidences, and the source takes both of them apart. The pilgrimage to the hermitage of Santa Cecilia — a little church perched on a ledge of the reddish precipice that overlooks the Vallagarina — is made on the fifth of August, a date fixed by the archpriest in 1830, and it falls on the same day as the vow of nearby Rovereto against the sacking by French soldiers in 1703: the entry notes the coincidence and discards it, because Volano was never threatened. The feast called Memoriae recalls instead the vow made to the Madonna during the First World War, when the village feared being evacuated like Rovereto and was not; but the source adds at once that neither Villa Lagarina nor Nogaredo nor Calliano were evacuated either, partly because the army needed a rear organisational area and a labour force. What remains is what people actually do: the parade of carnival floats, among the last left in Trentino, with its satirical magazine, and the Marzemino vineyards that have made Volano a città del vino.