Sasso Mobile

Up until the nineteen fifties Cereglio, an outlying village of Vergato was just a small group of homes and stables, covering just a few hundred metres. Later, from 1960 onwards, several holiday homes sprang up to add to the existing urban area and helped to create the Cereglio that we know today. The name Cereglio may have Roman origins. Since it was customary in those days to give places names that referred to the families that settled there, it could in fact derive from the name of the founder of the new settlement, Ceraellius. Another legend, however, speculates that the name Cereglio derives from Cerere, Latin Goddess of crops, and from Helios (Greek for the sun) with particular reference to the fertility of the soil and the favourable exposure of the village. In a kind of census, the author of the Chorography of Italy, Abbot Serafino Calindri, tells us that in 1781 the village was a Council that was united with Susano and had 448 souls, divided into 97 families. Calindri, in his chronicles, also reported a low rate of “morbidity”, the frequency with which a certain illness occurs in the population; this was probably due to the use of the now famous “Acqua Cerelia”, the source of which can be found in Pradavena, a small valley at 755m. In actual fact, the local people have always used this water for therapeutic purposes as it seems to have beneficial effects.