Casargo

Casargo has 849 inhabitants at 800 metres in the upper Valsassina, under the massive shape of Monte Legnone; until 1757 it was called Valcasargo. The town's coat of arms is a map of the place: the snowy profile of the Legnone between two lesser summits, a road climbing through meadows and woods to the pass of Piazzo, which is the watershed between Valsassina and Valvarrone and the old link between the Valtellina and the plain, and five golden circles, one for each of the five hamlets that make up the comune.

Two things here are worth the journey. In the hamlet of Somadino stands Santa Margherita, the oldest church in the whole Valsassina, of the eleventh century, built beside fortifications and along the road to the Valtellina: the road literally passed under its portico. Inside, together with a Renaissance fresco, there is a cycle of Byzantine ancestry in which, beside the Virgin and Child, the patron saints of the neighbouring churches are painted, and on the dome traces of a Christ Pantocrator remain; recent study of the apse suggests that this was the mother church of the whole upper valley, the one all the others came from. On the slopes, then, there are nineteen monumental beeches on the register: the largest, in the Val Piancone, is probably the oldest in Italy.