Bianzano

Bianzano stands at about six hundred metres, on the border between the Cavallina valley and the Seriana. Its castle is perfectly square, with a double ring of walls of which much survives and a tower twenty-five metres high planted in the middle of the front; an inscription to the right of the portal that leads into the inner courtyard carries the date 1233. It was built by the Suardi, who at that time held most of the Cavallina valley — but it was never a noble residence. It served to keep the produce of the land in a safe place and to give shelter to travellers, and from its position to control the road that joins the two valleys. Inside the entrance there are frescoes of the Tuscan school: cupids playing with garlands and flowers on the barrel vault, and the cardinal virtues in the niches at the sides of the Gothic portal.

Beside it, the shrine of the Assunta was built in 1234 and served as the parish church until 1614, when a larger one was built in the middle of the village; it keeps a wooden ciborium carved by Andrea Fantoni and a wooden Christ that people here call ol Signorù. With the coming of Venice and the loss of the Suardi's power, Bianzano was pushed into a minor role in the valley, and more than once it stopped being a comune at all: it was joined to Ranzanico at the end of the seventeen hundreds, then to Monasterolo at the beginning of the eighteen hundreds, made a comune again under the Lombard-Venetian kingdom and merged once more with Spinone in 1927. It became independent for good only on the eleventh of April 1955. Around the village the place names have never been Italianised: Torè, Dos Martì, the small spring-fed pond they call Valöcc, and the rocky steps known as Scalù del Diaol, the devil's stairs.