Ingria

Ingria sits in the Val Soana, is one of the least populated comuni in Italy and scatters across twenty-one hamlets besides the main village, many now empty: stone houses, stone-slab roofs, and Franco-Provençal, the language in which the place is called L'Éngri. At the start of the twentieth century almost two thousand people lived here.

The men worked as magnin, coppersmiths, as they did throughout the Val Soana: in winter they went down to the Piedmontese and Lombard plains, to Liguria, and on into Switzerland and France. The coat of arms says exactly that. On a sky-coloured field a golden single-arched bridge spans water where two silver fish swim, and on it sits a copper cauldron; above, a black eagle.