Valle di Blenio

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Alpe Casaccia
Valle di Blenio west of Campra
Olivone at the foot of the Sosto (2221 m above sea level)
Chiesa San Carlo di Negrentino , view of the Blenio valley
At Corzoneso, Church of Santi Nazario e Celso (Corzoneso)

The Valle di Blenio (German: Bleniotal , German historical: Palenzertal, Bolenzertal, Bollenztal; Rhaeto-Romanic: Val da Blegn ) is a valley in the Swiss canton of Ticino . The Blenio district consists of the political communities Acquarossa , Serravalle and Blenio and the localities (order down the valley) Ghirone , Campo (Blenio) , Olivone , Aquila TI , Torre TI , Grumo , Largario , Ponto Valentino , Marolta , Castro TI , Lottigna , Prugiasco , Leontica , Acquarossa, Corzoneso , Dongio , Ludiano , Malvaglia and Semione .

geography

The Valle di Blenio is traversed by the Brenno river and extends from the Lukmanier Pass to the confluence of the Brenno with the Ticino river near Biasca . The valley is well sunlit due to its pronounced north-south orientation and width and is therefore also called Valle del Sole ("sun valley ").

history

The history of the valley is presented in the Museo della Valle di Blenio in Lottigna . The musical group Vox Blenii produces musical interpretations .

Political history

With the crossings over the Lukmanier Pass, the Passo Sole, Greina and Diesrut passes, the valley is one of the early alpine routes. The Greinapass and Diesrutpass are believed to have been used by the Celts .

With the Frankish King Pippin in 754, the valley became a traffic route for various Holy Roman Emperors on their trains to Italy. Otto I. , Heinrich II. , Friedrich I. Barbarossa traveled through the valley several times. Around 948 the valley came under the jurisdiction of the Milan Cathedral Chapter through a donation from the Counts of Stazzona to the Bishop of Vercelli . During the investiture controversy between the emperor and the pope, it was at times directly subordinate to the rule of the emperors because of its strategic importance. At the end of the 12th century the ruins of Serravalle , which are still preserved today and which offered protection to the emperors who passed through, were destroyed by the people from the valley, loyal to the Pope.

In 1342 the valley came to the Visconti , 1356 to the Pepoli from Bologna , 1402 to the Barons von Sax , in 1422 temporarily back to the Visconti, then to the Sforza and finally in 1450 to the Bolognese Bentivoglio family. In 1457 the valley was able to buy itself out of the feudal rights - with the exception of the Milanese duke rights and the transfer to the Milan cathedral chapter.

In 1495 the Blenio valley took an oath of allegiance to the Uri people. After the Peace of Arona it was from 1503 to 1798 common rule of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden, with its seat in Lottigna. During the Helvetic Republic , the Blenio valley belonged to the canton of Bellinzona , after 1803 it became a district of the newly founded canton of Ticino.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, grocery merchants and artisanal chocolate manufacturers emigrated from the Blenio Valley to German-speaking Switzerland and numerous European metropolises, on which the prosperity of a small part of the population was based. Visible witnesses of this time are the returnees villas , which today characterize some villages, and the former Fabbrica di Cioccolato Cima Norma .

Cave castles

In the steep walls of the Blenio Valley there are several "pagan houses" (case dei pagani, also case dei cröisch, case dei grebel ), cave castles from the Middle Ages, which are connected to one another . They could have served both as guard houses and signal houses ( high watchers ), certainly also as refuge for the civilian population, even if, possibly, only for the wealthy. The sanitary expansion refers to this. The designation of the Blenio valley as the «fire light valley» (Valle dei fuochi) is a possible reference to such high watches. The buildings above Dongio and Malvaglia are best preserved. In the local tradition, numerous legends have emerged about the "pagan houses". One of them is that the earlier residents are said to have been people who escaped Christianization by fleeing to the mountains. The description of their habits (e.g. robbery of children) is in the tradition of European fairy tales and belongs to the cultural common property of the valley.

Natural disasters

On September 30, 1512, Monte Crenone fell into the valley and buried hundreds of people in the northern part of the village of Biasca . The stone masses of the «Büzza di Biasca» dammed the Brenno over a length of about four kilometers to the village of Malvaglia and the lake. The stone masses could no longer withstand the pressure of the dammed water; the lake ran out on May 20, 1515 suddenly and flooded Biasca and the subsequent valley of the Ticino ( Riviera ), tore down the bridge at Bellinzona and devastated the Magadino plain . The year 1868 brought another landslide to the valley: the village of Loderio with 400 inhabitants was buried under the rock masses.

railroad

A project for a Lukmanier railway through the Blenio valley and over the Lukmanier was already started in 1839. After the completion of the road over the Lukmanier Pass to Disentis in Graubünden , however, the project was only partially implemented. Between July 6, 1911 and September 29, 1973, the valley had a connection to the SBB in Biasca with the narrow-gauge railway Biasca-Acquarossa .

literature

Web links

Commons : Valle di Blenio  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sonia Fiorini: Blenio (district). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . March 8, 2017. Retrieved June 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Comune di Serravalle: Casa dei Pagani. Comune di Serravalle, accessed February 28, 2018 (Italian).
  3. ↑ Hannes Maurer: Ticino valleys Ticino worlds - history and stories . Verlag NZZ, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-85823-973-9 , p. 40 .
  4. ↑ [1] (PDF; 1.5 MB) Ancient astronomy: The stone tablet of Dagro (Malvaglia)
  5. ↑ [2] (PDF; 20 kB) NZZ March 23, 2000: Case dei pagani - the mysterious «pagan houses» in the Blenio valley

Coordinates: 46 ° 25 '39.2 "  N , 8 ° 58' 11.4"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred seventeen thousand six hundred and ninety-two  /  142950