A Salorno settlement existed as early as the
Roman imperial era. Salorno however is first mentioned as part of in the
Kingdom of the Lombards in a 580 deed, as
Salurnis, during the
Rule of the Dukes, when Duke
Euin of
Trent fought against the
Frankish troops of the invading
Merovingian kings
Guntram and
Childebert II. The village is home to the ruins of the medieval castle
Haderburg (Italian:
Castello di Salorno). First mentioned in a 1053 travelogue, it is situated on a
limestone rock high above the
Salurner Klause bottleneck of the Adige Valley. In 1158 the local Counts of
Eppan had two cardinals of the
Roman Curia on their way to the court of Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa attacked and raided. Frederick's cousin
Henry the Lion launched a
punitive expedition, whereby the castle was demolished. It was rebuilt afterwards and about 1200 was acquired by the
Counts of Tyrol. It was purchased by Count
Meinhard II of Gorizia-Tyrol in 1284, besieged and occupied by Duke
Louis V of Bavaria in 1349, and finally bequested to the Austrian
House of Habsburg in 1363. Emperor
Maximilian I had the fortifications enlarged, however, the castle lost its strategical significance soon afterwards and decayed. Since 1648 the ruins are in possession of the
Venetian counts of Zenobio-Albrizzi. After
World War I and the dissolution of
Austria-Hungary, Salorno was annexed to Italy together with the rest of South Tyrol and other areas of the Austrian territory, as consequence of the
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 October 1920. According to the census of 1921 the majority of the population of Salorno declared themselves as German-speaking. After that a governmental commission adjusted the result by modifying the declaration of people whose family name sounded Italian. Salorno and other municipalities of South Tyrol have since then an Italian-speaking majority. The effective
Italianization conducted by the
fascist Regime changed definitively the proportion between the languages. Only 37% of the inhabitants speak mainly German today. ==Coat of arms==