Madesimo

The Italian comune farthest from the sea is this one: the hamlet of Montespluga lies about 294 kilometres from the nearest coast, at Genoa. Until 1983 the village was called Isolato, but not for the distance: the name came from the hamlet of Isola, where the town hall stood until 1875. Today the seat is at Pianazzo, where the Scalcoggia torrent makes a drop of about 160 metres. Montespluga stands at 1908 metres, three kilometres from the Spluga pass, and has stayed what it was: a few houses around the road and the old customs building. Through here ran the via Spluga, the Roman road that linked Milan with Lindau.

The border decided the shape of the comune as well. For centuries the territory was part of the comune of Val San Giacomo, which the Austrians broke into today's municipalities to weaken the strong local Swiss irredentism; and after Italian unification the population showed little enthusiasm for the tricolour either. The comune's statute adopts as its arms, instead of a shield, the old flag of the Valle Spluga: three bands, each divided into four stripes of black, green, red and yellow for the quarters of the valley's three terzieri, with Saint James in the middle. Between the end of the 19th century and the early 20th Giosuè Carducci spent many summers here and helped make known the mineral waters, attested since 1612; the main street carries his name.