There is a story that tells who we are, a story that began far away.
It is the summer of 1944. Two young people meet in a small town in Île-de-France, while the world is still wounded by war. He is Felice Rigotti, an Alpini soldier from San Lorenzo in Banale, on the run from Normandy. She is Jacqueline Braun, a young woman from Paris, the daughter of an evacuated guitarist who did not like Italians.
But love, as we know, has no borders.
One day, Felice and a fellow soldier help that musician uproot an old, dried-up apple tree. It is a simple gesture, but from that gesture something great is born. Felice and Jacqueline talk, they smile, and between them a love blossoms that no war will ever be able to extinguish.
They marry in 1947. They stay in France for a while, but Felice begins to miss his mountains, the sun that warms the Banale, the scent of home. So, in the summer of 1948, he decides to return home. A long journey, with a heart full of hope and the joy, in his eyes, of sharing his land with the woman he loves.
On 23 August, Jacqueline and Felice get off the bus near San Lorenzo in Banale. It is Sunday. They set off on foot, suitcases in hand and the future ahead of them. When they reach the Dòs da Doa, Jacqueline stops. Before her are the Brenta mountains, Cima Tosa, the green that embraces everything. She sets the suitcases down on the ground, looks at that immense panorama and whispers: “My God, how wonderful. This is my new land, my beautiful land.”
From that day on, Jacqueline becomes Kiki to everyone, the woman who came from Paris and had chosen to call our mountains home. And from those simple words, spoken with wonder and love, comes what we still are today: the beautiful land of Trentino.
A land that welcomes, that makes you fall in love. A land that, as then, still speaks to the heart.
Story taken from the books La bella terra, piccola guida del Banale verso Castel Mani by Cesare Cornella and Moreno Baldessari and Bòcia, vèi che ném! La guera l'è finida. A colloquio con Felice Rigotti by Enzo Falagiarda
