Aviatico

In the caves above the village people have slept for millennia. The Bus de Scabla and the Paradiso degli asini, in the Albina valley, have given up potsherds of the Bronze Age and burials of the Copper Age; in the Corna Altezza cave, near Ganda, alongside the burials came bones of foxes, marmots and cave bears. The name, most say, comes from viaticum, refreshment for the journey, because this was the way through from the Val Seriana to the Val Brembana. In 973 a deed of the emperor Otto II enfeoffed the village, like much of the valley, to the bishop of Bergamo; later the via Mercatorum, paved and at its height between the 12th and the 16th centuries, climbed from Bergamo by Nembro and Salmezza up to this plateau.

The three hamlets were born of a fear. The chronicles of the time, between fact and fancy, tell that towards the end of 999 some inhabitants left their houses for dread of the year one thousand and took shelter in the caves of the surrounding mountains; on their return, finding their homes stripped bare, some did not move back and went to settle elsewhere: they are Ama, Amora and Ganda. The main village stands at 1022 metres, and has an oddity: by history and geography it is counted with the Val Seriana, but its water runs down into the Val Serina, a tributary of the Brembana; only the hamlets really lie in the Seriana basin.