For at least 500 years, my father and his ancestors lived in the parish of Santa Croce del Bleggio, in Trentino, Italy. This is a video of the first time I ever visited the parish church where all my paternal ancestors were baptised, married and buried. In this video you will see the sacred wooden shepherd's cross after which the parish was named, which was discovered on top on nearby Monte San Martino around 1600, and brought to the church in 1624, as well as the 1,000 year old subterranean chapel with 800 year old frescoes of angels on Romanesque pillars. You will also see the 1,000 year old square baptismal font in which all the babies of the parish were baptised for hundreds of years, and remnants of the even more ancient Longobard church dating from around 700 A.D. If you are descended from people of this region, I guarantee they would have been here! Hope you enjoy it.

Duvredo is a tiny ‘frazione’ (even smaller than a village) in Trentino in northern Italy, with a current population of only 94 people. In 1919, my late father (Romeo Fedele Serafini) was born in Duvredo, which had been the ancestral home of the Serafini family since 1685 (we've actually traced the Serafini family back to 1590, but they were in a different village during that time). My father’s family immigrated to the United States in 1923, and he never made the journey to see his ancestral home. But I was truly blessed to have been able to visit it in July 2014. Here's a short video I made where I show the town, the Serafini ancestral house (modernised) and a rare walk-through of an old-style mountain house that is very much the way it was 100 years ago (well...maybe a little messier!).

The Serafini of Bleggio had their roots in a different part the Giudicarie, in in a in a village called Favrio, which is the original and most ancient 'zone' within the present-day town of Ragoli (also considered part of Preore in the past). In this 23-minute video, I document our day in Favrio – called 'Freri' in local dialect – sharing the discoveries we made. You'll learn a local legend about the plague of 1630, see breath-taking views of La Chiesa the San Faustino, Monte Irone and Monte San Martino, discover the 'sorgente' (or source) of the mountain spring that gives life to this ancient village, learn about the practice of 'filò' and visit fascinating mountain houses – with their tiny wooden doors and rounded stone archways – built in 1571. You'll hear me huffing and puffing, as this mountain village is just never stops going up, up, up! But most of all, I hope you'll be able to feel what I felt when I walked the same streets and visited the same houses my ancestors would have seen (and possibly lived in) over 400 years ago.

A short trip on the "funivia" (cable car) in Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige Italy. In this video, you will see aerial views of the River Adige, the medieval church of S. Apollinare, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento cemetery, the Duomo (Cathedral) of San Vigilio, and a panorama of the alpine city of Trento and the surrounding Dolomites. You’ll see the ride up and down Monte Bondone from inside the cable car, and a few scenes of the village of Sardagna at the top of the mountain. NOTE: this is a home movie, so please bear with the occasionally shaky camera! Filmed in July 2015 by Lynn Serafinn, genealogist specialising in the families of the province of Trentino.

I made this video for my grandsons Percy and Hadrian on 31 Oct 2019, in honour of what would have been the 100th birthday of my late father, Romeo Fedele Serafini (known as Ralph Serafinn in the US). Romeo was born 31 Oct 1919 in the village of Duvredo, in the parish of Santa Croce del Bleggio, Trentino, Italy, and died in Brick, New Jersey on 25 September 2001. When Romeo was not quite 3 years old, he, his mother, aunt and sisters, left their home to join Romeo’s father in Brandy Camp, Pennsylvania in the United States. In this video, I describe what life was like in Romeo’s home village, and the trials of crossing the ocean to a strange, new land. While I made this video for my grandsons, I welcome other family members, friends and descendants of Trentino families to view it as well. I hope it strikes a chord with you. Please leave a comment to let me know.