Brondello

Brondello lies in the Bronda valley, on the banks of the stream that gave it its name. The arms say as much: on silver, a cornucopia flanked by a capital B, pouring water into the point of the shield. The village was never one centre but a handful of hamlets on the slopes, and first appears in 1138, when a dominus Henricus de Burdello granted land to the abbey of Staffarda.

Beyond the old stone bridge over the Bronda stands the parish church of Maria Vergine Assunta, fifteenth-century and much altered: the front keeps a sundial and late fifteenth-century frescoes of Saint Christopher carrying the Child, Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint George freeing the princess from the dragon. Of the castle, half destroyed in the seventeenth century, only the round tower survives, once crowned with tall swallow-tail merlons; in 1858 it was re-roofed and given a clock and the bell from the parish church, and has been the village clock tower ever since.