The old mule tracks of Sorico

The loop follows the mule tracks in the woods of the old pieve of Sorico, linking Sorico with Bugiallo, Montemezzo and Gera Lario, with glimpses of the first part of the lake and of the Pian di Spagna and the traces of farming life in abandoned hamlets. You start from Piazza Cesare Battisti, in front of the town hall, and pass the parish church of Santo Stefano: rebuilt from 1443 and seat of the pieve from 1444, it was remade in Baroque form by the Giulini in 1703 and keeps its apses, doorway and great bell tower. The mule track of Via Piana, where a monastery of the Umiliati stood with the little church of Sant'Orsola, climbs to the Mutt di San Giorgio and to Piazzo, above the waterfall of the Sorico stream, with an old stone mortar for pounding grain set into the wall. An iron and wooden bridge leads to Dolo and, by the hamlet of Fabbrico, to the sixteenth-century church of San Giovanni Battista at Bugiallo. From the oratory of San Gaetano a path in the chestnut wood climbs to Peledo, then the Via dei Monti Lariani goes down through the birches to the huts of Valdongo and the houses of Selve. From Dolo the road to Montemezzo crosses the stream, which falls steeply beside the bridge, and reaches the church of San Martino, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, on a terrace over the lake, the Pian di Spagna and the mouths of the Adda and the Mera. The Crucifixion in the chancel is by the school of Aurelio Luini, on the arch is the Last Judgement, and in the chapels given by emigrants to Palermo and Ancona are frescoes by Fiammenghino. You go down the mule track through the lanes of Cerceno to Gera Lario, by Via Antica Regina and Piazza Barilani with its painted houses, and return to Sorico below the ruins of Villa Giulina and past the round church of the Immacolata, converted into a house.

1. 01Ten kilometres in a loop from Piazza Cesare Battisti in Sorico, between 215 and 795 metres up, four hours: a demanding route, for any season.
2. 02The waymarks to follow are those for Dolo, Bugiallo and San Bartolomeo on the way up, for Peledo and the Via dei Monti Lariani at the top, for Montemezzo and Gera Lario on the way back.

WhereDomaso · Sorico