Oltre il Colle

The name says exactly where it is: to get there, from whichever valley you come, you have to cross a hill. The town lies in the hollow below Monte Arera, between the Val del Riso and the Val Parina, and it was a hamlet of Serina until 1569, when it obtained its autonomy. In the Middle Ages the inhabitants were renowned as nailsmiths and weapon makers, using iron dug from the local mines and from those of the Val di Scalve: it was the lords themselves who encouraged this trade, because it kept people from emigrating in large numbers. On the coat of arms there is a pick driven into a mountain and a fountain, that is the mines and the mineral spring that was used as a cure.

Zinc made the modern history of this valley. Mining begins in the nineteenth century; around 1850 the Italian companies are bought by an English and a Belgian firm, and in 1919 the Belgians take the lot. Fascism expropriates the mines, which pass from body to body until they reach Eni, and they close for good in 1982; in 2014 an Australian company obtained permits to reopen them. Near the place called Plassa, instead, stands Giuliano Mauri's Vegetable Cathedral: five naves and forty-two columns woven from eighteen hundred fir poles and six hundred chestnut branches, inside which grow the beeches that will one day take the place of the cages. Storm Vaia, in 2018, left only some of the columns standing.