Piario sits on a small plateau to the left of the Serio, in the upper Seriana valley, and covers little more than a square kilometre and a half: it is the fifteenth least extensive municipality in Italy. The name is said to come from plarios, a pre-Celtic word of the Orobi meaning valley bottom; other hypotheses derive it from the Latin apiarium, the place of beehives. The Romans brought centuriation here and opened iron mines in the mountains around, with a considerable rise in population: among the newcomers there were also slaves condemned to work in the workings. And one thing lasted longer than all the rest: Lombard law stayed in use in the customs of the people, in fact if not in law, until its abolition, which came only in 1491.
Along the Serio the forges worked the ore of the nearby mines into utensils, tools and weapons, as fifteenth-century documents say; and the valley produced a heavy cloth, warm and extremely tough, the panno grosso bergamasco, which armies were glad to buy. The merchants of Piario sold it far enough afield to obtain in 1714 a concession from the emperor Charles VI. To exist on its own account, however, the village took a long time: the first document naming it is of 1405, it became a parish at the start of the sixteenth century and it broke away from Clusone only in 1636, together with other villages, from which it separated in turn in 1648 under the name of Pierro.
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📅 Every year, on 17 January (the local calendar also lists a patronal feast on 16 August, for Saint Roch)
On 17 January Piario celebrates its patron Saint Anthony the Abbot, to whom the town's church is dedicated; on 16 August it also holds the patronal feast of Saint Roch, with stalls and fireworks.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Piario, but an easy day trip away.
