Nave (

Brescian Eastern Lombard is a group of closely related variants of Lombard, a Gallo-Italic language spoken in Lombardy, mainly in the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia and Mantua, in the area around Cremona and in parts of Trentino. Its main variants are ...

: ) is a town and ''

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

'' in the

province of Brescia The province of Brescia (; Brescian: ) is a Provinces of Italy, province in the Lombardy region of Italy. It has a population of some 1,265,964 (as of January 2019) and its capital is the city of Brescia.With an area of 4,785 km2, it is the ...

, in

Lombardy The Lombardy Region (; ) is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in northern Italy and has a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of Italy's population. Lombardy is ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. Neighbouring communes are, from the south and clockwise:

Brescia Brescia (, ; ; or ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the region of Lombardy, in Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Lake Garda, Garda and Lake Iseo, Iseo. With a population of 199,949, it is the se ...

, Bovezzo,

Concesio Concesio (Brescian: ; locally ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy in Trompia valley. It is located north of Brescia and south of Sarezzo. Concesio is located in the lower Val Trompia, at the foot of Monte Spi ...

Lumezzane Lumezzane (, locally ) is a town and (municipality) in the province of Brescia, in the Italian region of Lombardy. With a population of 22,255 (), it is one of the largest towns in its province. It is situated in the Gobbia Valley, which is a s ...

, Caino, Serle and Botticino. It is located in the Garza valley. The origin of the name Nave is not certain. Some maintain it comes from ''nava'' (cfr. English ''navel'') meaning the valley basin in which Nave sits, others think it is a contraction from Latin ''nam vallis'', wide valle

Another possibility is it comes from Latin meaning ship (cfr. Italian ''

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

'' with the same meaning) due to the overall shape of the town when seen from the Maddalena mountain. Notwithstanding this hypothesis being held as improbable, the coat of arms of the town sports a ship on it. Originally Nave consisted in a series of loosely connected urban sections: Nave proper (Nave centro, ''Nàe''), Campanile (''Kampanìl''), Cortine (''Kurtìne''), Dernago (''Dernàk''), Mitria (''Mìtria''), Monteclana (''Monteklàna''), Muratello (''Möradêl'') which eventually connected together following urbanization. This is reflected by the fact that Nave does not have a main square, which is very uncommon for an Italian town. Nave is also known as the Iron valley due to the many iron and steel factories that characterised the environment. In one of its urban section - Cortine - is still possible to visit "Villa Zanardelli", a former house of the President Giuseppe Zanardelli. A

Lombard language The Lombard language (,Classical Milanese orthography, and . ,Ticino, Ticinese orthography. Modern Western orthography and Classical Cremish Orthography. or ,Eastern Lombard, Eastern unified orthography. depending on the orthography; pronuncia ...

tongue twister plays on ''Nàe'' being both the name of the town and a past tense of the verb ''nà'' (English ''to go'', Italian ''andare''): ''en dè ke nàe a Nàe go 'nkontràt el prèt de Nàe, 'l ma dìt endò ke nàe me go dìt ke nàe Nàe'', which can be translated as: I was going to Nave when I met the priest of Nave, he asked me where I was going and I told him I was going to Nave.

Sources

Cities and towns in Lombardy {{Brescia-geo-stub