Naturno

Half a kilometre from the village, next to the cemetery, there is a small church that has a precise date thanks to an earring. The excavations of 1985 and 1987 showed that the church of San Procolo stands on the remains of an early-medieval house destroyed by fire, and among the ashes a basket-shaped earring was found that places the blaze in the first quarter of the seventh century. The church itself was built between the eighth and the ninth centuries as a halt along the Val Venosta, the road that links Switzerland with Italy; the same digs brought to light a plague cemetery of the seventeenth century.

Inside is the most precious thing: a Carolingian cycle of wall paintings of the ninth century, with scenes from the life of Saint Proculus, flat in line and bright in colour, close to the illuminated books of Kremsmünster and Salzburg. They are not frescoes, although they are usually called that. In the whole of Europe very few Carolingian wall paintings survive, and almost all of them are in this stretch of the Alps: here, at Malles and, across the border, in the Val Müstair; on the outside the church has a cycle of the thirteenth century instead. Above the village run the Waale, the old irrigation channels of larch planks fixed to the rock with iron ties, which had a trade of their own for their upkeep, the Waaler. On the coat of arms, granted in 1966, there is a gold triangle taken from the lords of Nals, who lived here until 1380.