Cassiglio

For centuries the village had no cemetery, and the solution was this: the dead were carried up to the pass above the houses, laid in a small chapel where their relatives said goodbye, and left there; then a bonfire was lit to let the people of Pizzino, the village on the other side, know that they should come up and fetch them. That pass is still called the Pass of Baciamorti, the kissing of the dead. The village's own name is far more prosaic: it comes from Latin and meant a small farm building used to store litter for the animals.

Iron was worked here too: in the Middle Ages forges ran with trip hammers driven by the water of the streams, the metal came from the Scalve valley and the Val Seriana, and more than sixty people worked at it. What came out were nails, and three nails still appear on the coat of arms granted to the comune in 2006. On a house beside the church there is also a painted scene worth the journey: a young gentleman has a serenade sung to the woman at her window, and behind him a skeleton has already loosed its dart.