Roverè Veronese

Roverè is the first place in the Verona country where the Cimbri settled. On 5 February 1287 an edict of Bartolomeo della Scala allowed about two hundred of them, come from the Vicenza country behind Olderico da Altissimo, to settle up here; from that beginning were born the Thirteen Communities, the villages of the Lessinia where for centuries Cimbrian was spoken, an Upper German tongue. In that language the village is called Roveràit. The Italian name comes instead from the Latin robur, the oak, and until 1908 it was called Roveré di Velo. Until 1375, moreover, Roverè formed a single comune with Chiesanuova and Cerro; today it stands at eight hundred and forty-three metres, on the ridge between three valleys, and its territory reaches fifteen hundred.

The Lessinia is karst throughout, and here the caves cannot be counted. The churches, instead, each tell a piece of history: San Nicolò is of the early fourteenth century, was rebuilt in 1496 and has a bell tower of 1493 made by Domenico da Lugo, but the historian Carlo Cipolla found the reference to an earlier church as far back as 804. At San Rocco di Piegara, a parish since 1648, there is a canvas by Domenico Macaccaro, who died in the plague of 1630. And then there is Bertoldo: Roverè is one of the villages that claim his birth, that cunning mountain man who in the books of Giulio Cesare Croce goes to the court of king Alboin at Verona and always wins by his wits. The character is an invention of the sixteenth century, and in 1984 Mario Monicelli made a film of it. In the village there remain a choir and a historic group of bell-ringers who ring in the Veronese system.