Argegno

Argegno lies on the western shore of the lake, at the mouth of the Telo stream, which comes down from the Val d'Intelvi. It is a place people pass through: from here the road climbs into the valley and on towards Switzerland, from here the cable car leaves for Pigra, and here the Statale Regina narrows between the houses.

The boat puts you down in the middle of the village. The Telo divides it in two, and the halves are joined by a footbridge and by the old bridge, a Romanesque stone bridge with a pointed arch on the line of the ancient Via Regina. Along the last stretch of the stream are the houses that overhang the water and Vicolo Mulini; on the square at the mouth stands the church of the Santissima Trinità. Twenty minutes is enough to see the village; then you go up to Pigra or carry on towards the centre of the lake. Between Argegno and Nesso the lake reaches its greatest depth, more than four hundred metres.

Argegno has Roman origins: the village stood on the Roman road that ran up the western shore of the lake towards Chiavenna. In the Middle Ages the village had two castles. From 1270 there was the castle of Antonio Castello, a follower of the Guelph Vittani in their war against the Ghibelline Rusca. The other, in the middle of the village, had the Viscardi tower, which collapsed in 1876; its lower part has become a house.

Around 1600 the Roggia Molinara was built, a channel that carried water from the Telo to four mills, a silk-reeling mill and a winding works. The mills ground wheat, maize and chestnuts from the valley. In 1648 the village was granted as a fief to the Gallio family. In 1848 the church of San Sisinnio housed the insurrection committee of the Val d'Intelvi against the Austrians. In the early twentieth century a trolleybus line linked Argegno with the villages of the valley as far as Pellio; in 1922 it was replaced by buses.

The church of the Santissima Trinità, on the lakeside square, was designed by Cesare Nava and consecrated on 24 August 1929. It replaced the old parish church in the centre, pulled down to make room for a square. It is neo-Romanesque: the façade carries mosaics of the four Evangelists, Sant'Abbondio and Sant'Anna, and the apse a mosaic of the Trinity from 1972.

San Sisinnio, outside the village on a terrace with a wide view, was the mother church until 1632. It has a Romanesque bell tower, the patron saint painted on the façade by Bernardino Barelli, and altar fronts of coloured scagliola. Three kilometres away, on the road to Schignano, the sanctuary known as Sant'Anna is dedicated to the Madonna di Gelpio. It keeps frescoes by Isidoro Bianchi from the first half of the seventeenth century, framed by white stucco attributed to Giovan Battista Barberini. The feast of Sant'Anna is celebrated there on 26 July.

The Argegno–Pigra cable car opened in 1971 and is a means of public transport. The valley station is about a hundred metres from the landing stage. Two twelve-seat cabins, with no operator on board, climb about 650 metres in six minutes, on a gradient that reaches 95 per cent in places.

At the top is Pigra, a village of just over two hundred people at 860 metres, with a terrace from which you look down on the first basin. Paths lead from Pigra into the valley: you can walk down to Colonno and join the Greenway, or carry on towards the villages of the Val d'Intelvi.

From Argegno the provincial road climbs the Telo valley towards Dizzasco and San Fedele Intelvi. The valley borders Switzerland and runs down towards Lake Lugano. This is the valley of the maestri antelami and maestri intelvesi, the masons, sculptors, stuccoists and painters who from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century worked from Genoa to Rome, from Venice to Vienna and in Germany. The stucco and scagliola in Argegno's churches come from this tradition.

The old mule track that led up to the sanctuary of Sant'Anna is still there: it is cut into the steep side of the Telo valley and has small wayside shrines along the way. Higher up, at Schignano, the Mascarun parade every year at Carnival, in wooden masks and colourful costumes, together with the Brut, dressed in rags; on Shrove Tuesday the Carlisep, the Carnival effigy, is burned.