Oltressenda Alta

Oltressenda Alta is so called because it lies beyond the senda: the senda was the old valley-floor road linking the villages on the left side of the Seriana valley, and this comune takes in the land beyond it. It is a scattered comune, made of two settlements in the valley of the Ogna torrent: Nasolino, where the town hall is, and Valzurio, which gives the little valley its name. A short way below Valzurio the torrent forms pools that people here call the blue lakelets, because of their colour.

The place lived for centuries on iron and water. In the upper Valzurio there were mines already worked in Roman times, and on the torrent the forges turned out tools and above all nails, while the paper mills made a paper reckoned to be good; from the wool came the panno grosso bergamasco, a heavy, hard-wearing cloth that the armies bought. In 1427 the whole area passed to Venice at Bergamo's own request, and the Serenissima lowered the taxes and widened the local liberties. One detail says how out of the way these valleys were: in the upper Seriana valley Lombard law remained in fact in the customs of the people until 1491.