Four steps in the history of Valbrona

A walk starting from Maisano di Valbrona, the historic hamlet founded by the Benedictine bonificator friars, takes you through the eras and histories of this area with a walk of about 5 km for a total elevation gain of less than 300 meters, very suitable for families. In the alpine pasture village of Alpe di Monte, we catch a glimpse of life in the early 1900s, when the icehouse was filled with snow and beech leaves to cool the milk and then spann it and make butter from it; passing by the witch's stones takes us back to the 1500s during the witch hunt. It was on this occasion that young Stephen (she had a male name) was accused of witchcraft because she managed to have better crops than the valley farmers. It goes all the way back to the Ice Age, with its deposits of erratic boulders, and to the barbarian invasions of the 400s, when the erratic boulders became excavated tombs called boulder avelli, which it is not uncommon to encounter here and there in villages and pastures: in time, in fact, these burials were transformed into fountains and drinking troughs for the herds.