Tonezza del Cimone

Tonezza del Cimone stands on a plateau that millions of years ago was one with that of the Seven Communes, before the waters of the Astico cut them apart. An old legend says the village was founded by seven brigands: having escaped from the castle of Marostica to flee Ezzelino da Romano, they took refuge up here, and their names are said to have remained as those of the first seven contrade — Boscato, Campana, Canale, Dalla Via, Dellai, Pettinà and Sella. On the village's name the theories are just as many: hard ground, thunder, the German mountain of thunder, or the land of the alders, according to Esule Sella, who was mayor of Tonezza.

Up here people dug: in 1292 the Maltraversi counts had an iron mine, and in the sixteenth century a German miner named Winter opened, with Vicentine capital, a foundry for smelting silver. That the people were German-speaking is said too by the inspector Francesco Caldogno, who towards the end of the sixteenth century found a village of thirty hearths, very poor, whose inhabitants «speak German» and live on a few fields and on timber, so harried by the lord of Beseno that «often these poor wretches are seized, imprisoned and at times wounded and killed». To defend themselves, in 1610 they raised with Lastebasse a militia of arquebusiers. Two centuries later the abbot Dal Pozzo noted among the village's vicissitudes also «the total loss of the German language».