Berbenno

The name Berbenno is among the oldest in the Imagna valley and most probably means "place of sheep": it comes from the Ibero-Ligurian root berb, the same as the Latin berbix, ram. Human presence here is older still: in the cave called Büs del cunì burials of the Copper Age have been found, with the bones and their grave goods. The first official document is from 1187, and concerns the revenues of these lands assigned to the diocese of Bergamo. Then came the wars: the Imagna valley, Guelph, against the neighbouring Brembilla valley, Ghibelline, with battles among the ravines and popular revolts put down by arms in 1363, in 1376 and in 1407.

In the parish church is kept a crucifix that comes from the little church of the Cà Passero hamlet and that has its fingers partly cut away: they were given to the emigrants of the hamlet who left for France or Switzerland. A piece of holy wood to take with you, and a crucifix left behind with incomplete hands. The other things of Berbenno are just as concrete: at Ca' Bafeno stands the old magistrate's court, frescoed, with the sala virgatoria where floggings were carried out; on Easter Monday people climb to the Romanesque church of San Pietro and roll coloured hard-boiled eggs down the meadows; and the Brunone valley is a natural monument of the Lombardy Region, established to protect a fossil site threatened by concrete.