Roncola

The name probably comes from the Latin roncus, a knoll, but the coat of arms takes it literally and puts a billhook there: canting arms. Beside it are the mount, for the height of the village on the slopes of the Albenza, the beech, which is the tree of the Valle Imagna, and the red and gold of Bergamo. In the Middle Ages this side was Guelph, against the neighbouring Ghibelline valley of Brembilla, and the whole area filled with fortifications: of Roncola's there are traces at Ca' Baetti, while the Rota coats of arms on some houses in the Mezzola quarter say who counted here.

The village's recent history can be read on its bells. The parish church of San Bernardo, of the fifteenth century and rebuilt in 1811, keeps a polyptych by Giovan Battista Moroni; on its tower there was a concert of five bells of 1857, cast by the Pruneri foundry of Grosio. The wartime requisition of the Second World War carried off the two smallest, and only in 1950 were they replaced, by the Colbachini foundry of Padua. The same happened at San Defendente, where the smallest bell is of the thirteenth century. Meanwhile in 1848 the guerrilla of Palazzago reached these slopes: Federico Alborghetti took refuge nearby before escaping to Switzerland.