Cimbergo

In the fifteenth century the vicinia of Nadro and that of Cimbergo quarrelled over the water of the Figna, and what they were quarrelling about says everything about how life worked in the mountains: the people of Nadro used the torrent for its motive force, to turn the wheels of their mills; the people of Cimbergo, who live higher up, diverted it upstream to irrigate their fields. If the water goes into the fields it does not reach the mills, and the other way round. The matter passed through several judges and local powers without being settled, until the Venetian government stepped in and found for Nadro. Cimbergo, for that matter, had mills of its own: two of them anciently and three in the twentieth century, one fed by the Re torrent to the north, the other by the Figna to the south — the two watercourses that close off the communal territory.

The castle of Cimbergo, on the other hand, has had three lives. In 1378 an attempt at peace was made there between the Ghibelline Federici and the Guelphs of the Camonica and the Val di Scalve: it did not hold, and twenty years later the two factions agreed instead to oppose the bishop together. In 1403 the Visconti enfeoffed the Federici, but the new lord, Giacomo called Maccagno, could not get into his own castle: it took five years and commissioners sent on purpose from Milan before he set foot in it, in March 1408. On 28 May 1430 Bartolomeo della Torre of Cemmo received the county of Cemmo-Cimbergo in the basilica of San Marco in Venice, and lost it within a few years for having sided with Milan; it passed then to the counts of Lodrone, who came from Trentino. In 1810 the comune bought the castle from the Lodrone, who had long since stopped living there, and turned it into a cemetery; in 1849, when the church bells broke, it was decided to use the stones of the by then abandoned castle to raise the new bell tower. Above the village, on the rock, are the hundreds of prehistoric carvings that make this territory, together with Ceto and Paspardo, a site recognised by UNESCO. And on 13 July 1653 lightning struck the church of San Giovanni during mass, killing two women.