Andalo Valtellino

Andalo Valtellino and Rogolo touch each other: two villages a few minutes apart, at the mouth of the Valtellina. Their histories, though, do not agree on which was born from which. Rogolo is recorded as created by the Grisons in 1616 by detachment from Andalo; Andalo is recorded as created by the Grisons in 1778 by detachment from Rogolo. Two separations in opposite directions, more than a century and a half apart. What happened in between — a reunion, a shift of the chief settlement, a hasty entry in a register — is written down nowhere. What remains is that here, to divide two villages, once was not enough.

The comune of today has 552 inhabitants and borders Delebio, Dubino, Mantello and Rogolo, the other protagonist of the story. In the Valtellina dialect it is called Andel: two syllables instead of the three of the Italian name, the first vowel nasal, while the word that follows is simply the name of the valley. The coat of arms and the gonfalon arrived late, granted by decree of the President of the Republic on 11 September 1996 — more than two centuries after the birth of the comune. And the gonfalon, in the end, is a cloth of blue and nothing else: no figure, no division, only the colour.