Averara

Averara is the oldest village in the upper Brembana valley, on paper at least: the document that in 917 names an inhabitant of the area of Abrara is the earliest text known for this whole region, and at that time the name covered the entire valley, neighbouring villages included. In the Middle Ages Averara mattered because it was the last settlement on the via Mercatorum, the road that led from the Seriana valley into the Valtellina and the Grisons: being border ground, it had a customs post and two watchtowers.

Then, in 1593, the Venetians opened the via Priula further down the valley, towards the San Marco pass: the traffic moved there and Averara's decline began, and has never stopped. From the good times there remain the arcaded street of the centre, where trading was done, with coats of arms and paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the two towers that ended up on the municipal shield — which in the Camozzi armorial of 1888 also had an arrow, since vanished. At Valmoresca a very narrow Bergamask is still spoken, the gaì, with Germanic cadences left by families who stayed on after Austrian rule: the surnames say as much, Egman, Maver, Baschenis.