Castelbello-Ciardes

On the morning of the twelfth of April 2010, a little before nine, the regional train running from Malles to Merano was going through the narrow gorge that divides Castelbello from Laces when a landslide struck it and threw it into the ravine below: nine people died, twenty-eight were injured, seven of them seriously. Here the valley is a corridor, and everything in it has always had to do with passage and with water: the paths that follow the Waalwege were made to maintain the rogge, the irrigation channels that carry water to the orchards, and now people walk them for pleasure.

The castle of Castelbello is of the thirteenth century; from 1531 to 1949 it belonged to the counts Hendl, and the comune's coat of arms is theirs: a red mill wheel with eight paddles on a silver field. Above Colsano stand the ruins of another castle, raised in the thirteenth century by the Montalban and uninhabited since 1423. And there is Castel Juval, of the same age, which is the summer house of Reinhold Messner. The two halves of the name are of different ages and different tongues: Castelbello is written Castelbel in 1286, while Ciardes is probably pre-Roman and appears as Sardis in 1183, then Schardis, Tschardes, Tschars. Here people speak almost only German.