Lozio

Lozio is a scattered comune: there is no hamlet that can be called the chief town, and the town hall is at Laveno. The territory takes in the whole Val di Lozio, with Laveno, Sucinva and Sommaprada in the lower part and Villa at the head of the hollow. That the place is of Roman origin is said by the bronze and copper coins bearing the effigies of Tiberius and Constantine found here and by the very names of the hamlets, which come from Latin: Villa, Sunciva from sub civis, Sonvico from summus vicus. In 1156 the chronicles record a brawl between the people of Lozio and those of Borno who, going in procession to Cividate Camuno, clashed at Malegno. The village had a smelting furnace where they melted the iron that came from the Val di Scalve, and for a certain time, between the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, Bernabò Visconti allowed it to belong to the community of Scalve, before it entered that of the Valle Camonica.

In the castle of the Nobili of Lozio took place the massacre that bears the village's name: it was after that slaughter that, between 1411 and 1428, the fief passed to the Federici. The Nobili began to decline from the sixteenth century, selling large pieces of their estates to the communities of Scalve, Ossimo and Lozio, and in 1754 a dispute with the vicinia made them lose the hunting right as well. Of vicinie, here, there was one for each hamlet, plus a general one that met at the dos dei Consei, the knoll of the councils; and in the registers of those assemblies are noted the differences between the Camunian dialects spoken in the four hamlets, which are only a few hundred metres apart. Each hamlet also has its nickname: Laigna at Laveno, Passèi at Villa, Canò at Sommaprada, Quàdoi at Sunciva. On the thirteenth of December, for Saint Lucy, the children cleaned the chimney chains by dragging them through the streets; on the first of January the young men went about with a steelyard to weigh whoever they met; and when a newly married couple came back to the village, a bonfire was lit at the entrance. A Camunian proverb says: down the valleys, up the knolls, you never get to Lozio.