Vezza d'Oglio

The village takes its name from a barrel. Legend says that a flood destroyed the old settlement of Rossolina and that the village was refounded near the spot where, on the gravel bed of the Oglio, a barrel was found miraculously intact and full of oil: èsa, in the Camunian dialect, means precisely barrel, and it is the name the village has kept. The barrel stands in the point of the municipal arms, beneath the eagle attacking a stag, which is the historic emblem of the Val Camonica. Higher up there is the Sass de la stria, the witch's stone: rock engravings of tools that to the inhabitants looked like the work of witches, and witches were said to hold their rites at the Tonale pass, a few kilometres further on. Until 1863 the village was called simply Vezza: the «d'Oglio» was added after the unification of Italy, to tell it from Vezza d'Alba.

In 1496 the emperor Maximilian I was lodged at Vezza by Bertoldo Federici, who because of the excessive expense he had to meet was forced to raise the tithes he collected from many communities of the valley. Fire came back more than once: in 1627 more than sixty people died, on 23 September 1681 another thirty, and another fire came on 27 January 1807. On 4 July 1866, just outside the village, the battle of Vezza d'Oglio was fought between the Italian and the Austrian army. At the end of the Second World War the retreating Wehrmacht placed four cannons at the corners of the village to destroy it, in reprisal for the killing of some German doctors and the seizure of an ambulance by alleged partisans: what saved it was the caretaker of villa Ferrari, who spoke German.