Around the eleventh century Benedictine monks built at Bienno the Vaso Re, a wooden artificial channel that diverted part of the waters of the Grigna torrent and brought them into the village. It served to turn the water wheels of the mills, the sawmills and above all the forges: in the sixteenth century it is reckoned that more than 100 water-driven trip hammers were working here. Until the seventeenth century the main products were edged weapons and armour, and that trade made the village rich enough to fill it with public works, ten towers and two castles.
Three thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight inhabitants in the province of Brescia, in the Val Grigna. In 1799, when the village assemblies were abolished, the inhabitants divided the common lands among themselves, and the State claimed them as public property: the dispute lasted more than a century. In 1901, faced with a threatening crowd near the municipal office, the carabinieri fired on it and killed a woman and a boy; the compromise came only in 1927. In April 2016, after a referendum, Prestine ceased to be a municipality and became a hamlet of Bienno.
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📅 Every year, on 15 February, the end of Carnival and start of Lent
Bienno celebrates Saints Faustinus and Jovita on 15 February, a date that traditionally marks the end of Carnival and the start of Lent.
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.
