San Martino Buon Albergo

The name comes from an inn. Where three roads met — the one from the hills, the one from Vicenza and the one from Belfiore — there stood on the via Postumia an ancient haribaig, at once a fortified camp and a lodging for resting and changing horses: the «good inn». Together with the church dedicated to Saint Martin, known to have existed since the ninth century, it gave the village its name, which appears for the first time in a deed of 26 August 1146: «Ecclesie sancti Martini, in loco ubi dicitur Bonum Albergum». Not far off, in 489, Theodoric had beaten Odoacer in the country between San Martino and San Michele.

For centuries the village had another name as well: San Martino of the Paper Mills. The waters of the Fibbio turned mills with great wheels, fulling mills for wool and several paper mills, important enough to earn it that name. Then the position that had been its fortune turned against it: from the fourteenth century onwards the armies besieging Verona camped here, and took their supplies without paying. That was the end of San Martino's industry. There is, finally, an administrative oddity that persists: the hamlet of Ferrazze, detached from Montorio in 1927, has never shared either history or geography with San Martino — it was Montorio's industrial village — and part of its built-up area today lies within the comune of Verona.