Piantedo

This is the first village of the Valtellina for anyone arriving from Lecco, and it has always been a threshold: six hundred and forty-seven hectares in all, but set at the crossing between Valtellina, Valchiavenna and the lake of Como. The first written mention of Piantedo as a comune is of 1530, when the community was under the Three Leagues, which in 1512 had invaded and conquered the Valtellina and the Valchiavenna: a frontier comune, and therefore disputed between the Leagues and the Duchy of Milan. In 1589, during a pastoral visit, the bishop of Como Feliciano Ninguarda counted here fifty hearths, that is fifty families, all Catholic. Then, in 1797, with the arrival of Napoleon, Piantedo became a frazione of Delebio, and it went back to being a comune only in 1815, when the Valtellina entered the Lombardo-Veneto; at the first census of the Kingdom of Italy, in 1861, it had more than five hundred inhabitants.

Just outside the built-up area, at the edge of a chestnut wood in the locality of Valpozzo, stands the sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie e del Suffragio, with a bell tower of thirty metres. Its foundation is the story of a man saved from brigands by the apparition of the Virgin, and of the promise made in exchange: to build a religious house that would serve as a refuge for travellers. It was not a devotional formula but a practical thing, because right beside it passes the Sentiero del Viandante, the wayfarer's path, and so does the Sentiero Mariano. The parish church, in the centre of the village, is dedicated to Santa Maria Nascente: the first building is of the fifteenth century, enlarged in the eighteenth. And there is a habit that ended not long ago: for several decades, until the end of the nineteen seventies, the stockmen of Piantedo practised transhumance, taking cows and goats to Val Gerola and Val San Giacomo, where the families lodged from the end of May until the beginning of autumn.