Monticelli Brusati

The village carries in its name the surname of a family it drove out. The Brusati, powerful Guelphs, arrived at Monticelli around the middle of the eleventh century and were finally expelled in 1410; the second half of the place name, the half that commemorates them, only begins to appear in documents after that. Before, there was just Monticelli, from the Latin for small hills, recorded in 998 in a decree of Otto III as Montecellum — and precisely because it was such a common name all over Italy, it is now hard to tell this Monticelli from the others in old records.

Four thousand four hundred and one inhabitants in the province of Brescia, scattered across fourteen hamlets on the moraine hills between Lake Iseo and the lower Valtrompia — Villa, Bozze, Calchera, Costa, San Zenone, Fontana, Parmezzana, Calzana, Dosso, Colombaia, Baiana, Foina, Gaina and Torre. Little is known of the local history, and for a specific reason: the presence of the Brusati blocked the Cluniac priory of Rodengo from establishing itself here as it did in neighbouring villages, and in those days it was religious institutions that wrote down everything happening on their lands. The Gaina waterfall path climbs a gorge cut by the torrent through the limestone.