Cassina Valsassina

On the arms of Cassina Valsassina there is a tower, and it is that of the Torriani, who were the first lords of this territory. The ruins stand at the mouth of the road that leads to the Culmine di San Pietro and to the Mezzacca, and the tower was put there for two reasons: to watch over an important trade route and to stay in sight of the rock of Baiedo, at Pasturo. The village stretches from north to south: the built-up part is all in the northern strip, where it makes one thing with Cremeno and with Moggio, while behind it opens the little valley of Mezzacca, which has the hamlet of the same name and closes high up at the Culmine, the southernmost point of the comune. The oratory of San Giovanni Evangelista, enlarged at the end of the nineteenth century, holds inside the frescoes of Luigi Tagliaferri: Saints Ambrose and Roch beside the altar, and on the vault of the apse God the Father, the Assumption and Saint George.

A comune, though, is something Cassina has only lately become again. In the eighteenth century they were little more than two hundred souls; in 1809 the village was annexed to Barzio, then it became independent again and by the middle of the nineteenth century passed five hundred inhabitants; in 1928, under fascism, it was annexed to Cremeno, and its autonomy was given back to it only in 1948. The oratory, for that matter, also depends on the church of San Giorgio Martire at Cremeno: the village that had taken it. In the beginning it was called simply Cassina, and the name of the valley was added later.