Roverchiara

The village was once called Fonzane, probably from the name of a family of the district. For Roverchiara the likeliest explanation starts from the Latin rublicus, a diminutive of rubus, the bramble — a stretch of brambles — and the sources set out the whole chain of forms the name went through: rublicus, rovéclo, rovechio, rovecio, roecio, roeciara, and at last roverciara, roverchiara. Another explanation prefers the rovere, the oak, and a scattered wood; a third goes back to Ripaclara, and ties the name to the port on the Adige, which certainly existed, and to a light that lit it. Among the three the comune chose in 1983, when it took its arms: a great oak rooted in a wide green countryside, put there to recall the trees that covered this land and that probably made up the wood reaching as far as Roverchiaretta. Choosing a tree, the description notes, is a thing rural comuni do often, and in the Bassa veronese in particular.

The first written news is of 813: a document in which Rotaldo, bishop of Verona, assigns revenues and possessions to a Christian community here, a Schola Cantorum that lived around the pieve and the baptistery in continuous contact with its bishops. Around the year one thousand that pieve had thirty-six priests in its service, and others in minor roles: a great many, for a place of this size. Then, in 1206, the relationship ended badly: the comune seized the bishop's property and sent the bishop, Adelardo II, into confinement at Monteforte. In 1234 Ezzelino da Romano, in order to take Albaredo, threw a bridge over the Adige here, anticipating the deeds of the engineer corps. Then came the Scaligeri, the Visconti and at last the Venetians; and under Venice Roverchiara was a port for goods and passengers as important as the one at Legnago, in a countryside that grew food for Verona. But the river has also taken things back: the pieve was destroyed by a breach of the Adige in 1470 and rebuilt in 1526, then enlarged again and again until it took the shape it has now, in 1860.