Isola di Fondra

The name, they say, comes from the Latin fundere, to smelt: the Romans dug copper here, and the smelting gave the place its name. Over the centuries the mines multiplied — sixteen for iron and two for lead, besides the copper — and with them the foundries and the forges where nails were made. The administrative history is an accordion: at first there was a single municipality, Valfondra Inferiore, holding together Carona, Branzi, Fondra and Trabuchello; in 1595 it split, in 1639 Trabuchello too went its own way, and in 1927 Fondra and Trabuchello found themselves together again in this municipality.

When the church of Santa Margherita at Trabuchello was restored, what lay underneath came to light. Six early medieval graves, the oldest perhaps of the sixth century, the skeletons enclosed between slabs of local stone; one is much smaller than the others and holds the bones of a child. Under the presbytery there was a crypt used as an ossuary, and at the centre of the church a wall older than everything else, between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages: perhaps a watchtower, set there to guard the mines the Romans already knew. In the parish church of San Lorenzo, at Fondra, there is instead an Annunciation by Garofalo.