Rota d'Imagna

Rota d'Imagna has 926 inhabitants in the Valle Imagna, and there are three theories about the name: the Latin rupta, the way opened between obstacles; the Lombard Rothar, the red-haired man; or the wheel, which is on the arms of the Rota family, born here and later Venetian. In the Grotta dei Polacchi bones and grave goods of the Bronze Age came to light, now in the archaeological museum of Bergamo; the village appears in documents from 1151.

In the Middle Ages people cut each other's throats here: the Valle Imagna was Guelph, the Val Brembilla Ghibelline, and Rota was sacked several times in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A legend tells that after the last battle, the one of 1404, a certain Andrea was taken prisoner and beheaded, and that the winners amused themselves kicking his head along the ground — in a village whose name is Rota, the wheel. Out of Ca' Piatone, on the other hand, came Giacomo Quarenghi, born in 1744, one of the great names of neoclassical architecture in Russia, who died in Saint Petersburg. And since March 2022 the village has been hosting 93 Ukrainian minors who arrived without their families.