Torre di Santa Maria

The comune's territory takes in the summit of Monte Disgrazia, and that name does not mean what it looks like: it is the Italianization of the Lombard Des'giascia, that is disghiaccia, the mountain that sheds its ice. Not a misfortune, then, but a description: down its flanks still come the vedretta del Disgrazia, the Ventina, the Cassandra glacier and the Preda Rossa. The summit was climbed for the first time on 24 August 1862 by an English party — Leslie Stephen, E. S. Kennedy, Melchior Anderegg and T. Cox — from the Preda Rossa valley by the Pioda ridge, which is still the ordinary route today; and the mountain's most famous line, opened in 1914 on the north-north-east ridge, is called the Corda Molla, the slack rope.

The village, on the other hand, lies low down, where the Torreggio runs into the Mallero, and its parish church keeps a painting by Fermo Stella. He came from Caravaggio, a pupil of Gaudenzio Ferrari, and for more than a decade he worked up and down the Valtellina: with his master on the great wooden altarpiece of the Assunta at Morbegno in 1520, then at Sondalo, at Ponte, at Poggiridenti, and at Teglio in 1528, where the community had him fresco the oratory of San Lorenzo as an ex-voto for the end of the plague. The comune's arms date from 1953; its hamlets are Prato, Sant'Anna and Tornadù.