Faedo Valtellino

There are comuni whose history was written somewhere else, and Faedo Valtellino is one of them. It lies three kilometres southeast of Sondrio, at the gates of the provincial capital, and that alone explains a good deal: whenever something had to be put down in writing, it ended up in the records of the neighbouring town. Of the entry concerning the village, the only chapter that really fills up is the one counting people, census after census. That is not nothing: a comune of 545 inhabitants exists as long as that number holds.

The rest is told by the name and the boundaries. In the Valtellina dialect the village is called Faécc, shorter and more closed than the Italian form, while the second word is the one the whole valley carries with it. It borders Albosaggia, Piateda, Montagna in Valtellina and Sondrio: four comuni, one of them the capital. On a map of the Valtellina it is a small cutting attached to a large one, and you have to look for it; those who live there, on the other hand, know perfectly well where Sondrio ends and Faedo begins. That line, in the end, is what makes Faedo a comune and not a district.