Rossa

Rossa lies in Val Sermenza, a side valley of the Valsesia, on the steep southern slope of the Pizzo Tracciora di Cervatto, two hundred metres above the valley floor, so the sun reaches it even in winter. Only one road in the village can be driven; the hamlets scattered over the slope — Piana, Rainero, Folecchio, Cerva and the rest — are reached on foot. In Walser the place is called Russu.

Joined to Boccioleto since early times, Rossa won its independence in the seventeenth century. Its arms combine an eagle with wings displayed and a chestnut tree in fruit on a meadow strewn with stones, the ground here exactly. The bell tower of the Assumption parish church, thirty metres high, is fifteenth-century, rebuilt in the nineteenth. Don Luigi Ravelli, in his Valsesia e Monte Rosa of 1924, noted a climate mild enough to ripen even peaches and grapes.