The place name is from the Latin “paternus”, an adjective derived from the primitive word “potrius” from “poter”, which as a place name is often used to indicate “a holding inherited from the father”.

Paterno is a village in the municipality of Vallo di Nera at an altitude of 605 m. a.s.l. with 23 inhabitants in 1971. Paterno can be considered part of a territorial “system” that was set up between the 11th and 14th centuries, which consisted of the castle, the parish church (San Giusto), the village (Piedipaterno)  and a monastic settlement (L`Eremita). The latter is the oldest part of the entire system and was the decisive impulse for its construction and organisation.

The ancient castle today is in ruins and abandoned, whereas a small, rural town has developed outside it. Later, from the late Middle Ages onwards, the village of Piedipaterno, to which it was linked by a tower halfway up the hillside, became increasingly important.

Proof of the importance of the mountain road is shown by the existence along its path of the parish church of Paterno and of numerous fortified villages, some of which are certainly very old, even though the appearance of the castles today would suggest they date back to the 13th and 14th centuries.

From Paterno the road followed a path that ran lower down compared with the road today and then went up as far as Montefiorello.  In this area the complex, geological structure enables the formation of incredible, perennial springs, such as that of Fontecanale, right above Montefiorello, where the water from the limestone slopes of the two mountains Galenne and Pianciano flows out over an impermeable bed of marlstone.