Grantorto

Grantorto has 4,661 inhabitants on the Brenta, in the resurgence belt, and the name is a shape of ground: it comes from grumum, the terrace left by floods. The village does indeed sit on a long raised natural ridge, in the middle of countryside the river has remodelled every time it broke out. It is a word that did well across the north: it also names a Grontorto near Cremona, Grumolo delle Abbadesse nearby, and several villages in the Bergamo area.

On the coat of arms there are two cities together, and it is not a whim: until 1853 the border between the provinces of Padua and Vicenza ran through here, and Grantorto still belongs to the diocese of Vicenza. So they put the silver field of Padua beside the red shield crossed with silver of Vicenza. In the village the mill is still there, recorded in the documents as early as 1456: it is of the Roman type, it had three wheels and three pairs of millstones, and two of those wheels — five metres across — can still be seen turning. In the Middle Ages there were two villages here, and one, recorded from 1191, was called Canfriolo: today it is four houses, but the neighbours still call that area by its name.