Porte di Rendena
Porte di Rendena is a municipality in the Val Rendena, in Trentino, created on 1 January 2016 through the merger of the municipali...
Updated 21 July 2026
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The story
The story of Porte di Rendena
Porte di Rendena in the Val Rendena and the Villages of the Merger
Porte di Rendena lies in the middle Val Rendena, the valley carved by the Sarca stream between the Adamello group to the west and the Brenta Dolomites to the east, in the heart of western Trentino. The municipality was created on 1 January 2016 through the merger of three pre-existing municipalities: Darè, Vigo Rendena and Villa Rendena. The latter had itself already absorbed, since 1928, the hamlets of Javrè and Verdesina, once independent municipalities in their own right. The result is a scattered municipality made up of five hamlets - Darè, Javrè, Verdesina, Vigo Rendena and Villa Rendena, the seat of the town hall - spread along the valley floor and the first wooded slopes, across a territory of roughly forty square kilometres bordering Pelugo, Sella Giudicarie, Tione di Trento, Tre Ville and Valdaone. The name chosen for the new municipality, Porte di Rendena (Gateways of Rendena), recalls the transit position of these villages along the valley, between the resorts of Pinzolo and Madonna di Campiglio further north and the Giudicarie area to the south.
The Churches and the Baschenis Frescoes
The sacred art heritage of Porte di Rendena centres on two fresco cycles signed by the Baschenis, a family of itinerant painters originally from the Val Brembana who worked throughout Trentino between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the church of San Valentino at Vigo Rendena, Simone Baschenis painted a cycle in 1539 that can still be admired on the building's walls today. At Javrè, the church of Santa Maria Assunta, whose origins date back at least to the eleventh century and which was reworked several times in later centuries, preserves frescoes from 1543 by Simone II Baschenis, enriched in 1735 by elegant stucco decorations that reflect the valley's Baroque taste. Alongside these two buildings, the municipal territory holds other significant places of worship: the church of San Martino, the parish church of Villa Rendena, the church of San Lorenzo at Vigo Rendena, whose feast is celebrated on 10 August, and the chapel of San Rocco at Darè, dating to 1579 and partly rebuilt in the nineteenth century, dedicated to the patron saint celebrated on 16 August.
The Adamello-Brenta Park and the Outdoors
Much of the territory of Porte di Rendena lies within the Adamello-Brenta Nature Park, which at 618 square kilometres is the largest protected area in Trentino, enclosing the valley between the glaciers of the Adamello group to the west and the dolomitic walls of the Brenta group to the east. From the valley floor, where the Sarca flows, trails climb through forests of larch and fir, alpine pastures and scattered masi, reaching high pastures used for raising the Rendena cattle breed, native to the valley. The landscape alternates a cultivated valley floor with wooded slopes and peaks above three thousand metres, with hiking and cycling routes linking the hamlets to the centres of the Val Rendena and to the park's entry points, away from the larger tourist flows of Pinzolo and Madonna di Campiglio.
The Masi, the Moleta and Local Traditions
The Val Rendena, and with it Porte di Rendena, is linked to the figure of the moleta, as the knife grinder is called in the local dialect: for generations many valley residents emigrated seasonally across Europe to sharpen knives and scissors, a trade that shaped the identity and economy of the area. Alongside this, the craft of making wooden clogs was passed down in Villa Rendena and Javrè, flourishing particularly during the Second World War. Also at Javrè, in 1907, Empress Maria Teresa of Austria established a lace-making school, whose memory is preserved at Casa Guste, a nineteenth-century rural house turned cultural centre and reading point of the municipal library. The territory also holds numerous scattered masi, traces of a rural economy based on livestock, grain and forestry, living on in festivals such as the Festa dal Canedarlo, dedicated to canederli dumplings, and the Corsa dei Biroc', a race of handmade wooden vehicles held in Vigo Rendena every August.
History and Experiences
Human presence in the Porte di Rendena area dates back at least to the Bronze Age, with subsequent Rhaetic, Celtic and Roman traces found above all around Villa Rendena. Like much of Trentino, the valley belonged for centuries to the Prince-Bishopric of Trento and remained under Habsburg rule until 1918. The recent history of the villages is also marked by fires that destroyed their timber-built fabric, forcing reconstructions that modernised their urban layout: Javrè burned in 1910, Villa Rendena in 1924 and Vigo Rendena in 1929. During the Fascist period the administrative structure changed more than once: in 1928 Darè was merged with Pelugo into Vigo Rendena, regaining autonomy only in 1946. The process concluded on 1 January 2016 with the merger of Darè, Vigo Rendena and Villa Rendena into today's Porte di Rendena, whose coat of arms, approved in 2017, combines the golden eagle and the mountain that symbolised the former municipalities. Today, visiting the frescoed churches, Casa Guste and Casa Cüs at Darè makes it possible to retrace this history in a few hours.
Not to be missed
- Simone Baschenis frescoes (1539) in the church of San Valentino at Vigo Rendena
- Sixteenth-century frescoes and eighteenth-century stuccoes in the church of Santa Maria Assunta at Javrè
- Casa Guste at Javrè, a cultural centre dedicated to the local lace-making tradition
- A hike in the Adamello-Brenta Nature Park among larch and fir forests
- The Festa dal Canedarlo and the Corsa dei Biroc' at Vigo Rendena
To see
What to see in Porte di Rendena
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