Tartano

For centuries the valley depended on Talamona, down on the valley floor. In 1726 the mountain people tried to break away, but the plan ran aground against the opposition of the wealthier ones, who did not want to lose the pastures below; it took the Austrians, and only in 1816 was the municipality of Tartano born, together with Campo. The road, on the other hand, arrived in the twentieth century: until then, getting to Morbegno meant hours of walking over steep ground. The carriage road came out of a speech the minister Ezio Vanoni made in 1957 — the plaque is still there, near the bridge over the Vicima — and it was built in stages in the early sixties: twelve hairpins to climb from the valley floor up to Campo.

On 18 July 1987, in the afternoon, a flow of mud and debris came down on the village: it struck the apartment block called la Quiete, destroyed it and shifted it four metres, and it hit the Gran Baita hotel below, where eleven holidaymakers died. It was one of the worst episodes of the storm that took fifty-three lives in the Valtellina that summer. In 2018, at Campo Tartano, the Ponte nel cielo was opened: a rope bridge 234 metres long, hanging 140 metres above the bed of the torrent, which when it was built was the highest in Europe.