Morbegno

Little is known of the origins. The place name Mosergia appears in a document of 724, of doubtful authenticity, by which the Lombard king Liutprand granted the Como basilica of San Carpoforo some land in the lower valley. The name Morbegno, as Morbinium and Morbenno, shows up only from the eleventh century; late in the twelfth the inhabitants left the marsh of the first settlement for the healthier banks of the Bitto, where the old town now stands.

The first bridge over the Adda, designed by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, was swept away by a flood; the Ganda bridge that replaced it was signed by the Milanese engineer Francesco Bernardino Ferrari and finished in 1778, humpbacked, its central arch kept high on purpose so a boat could pass beneath under full sail. For centuries the only safe crossing in the lower valley, it was the road the Venetians took down from the San Marco pass towards northern Europe. Among the Dominican inquisitors here was Michele Ghisleri, the future pope Pius V.