A gorge shaped millions of years ago by the erosion of the Pioverna stream bed
The Lecco side of Lake Como is home to the Bellano Gorge, carved out millions of years ago by the Pioverna stream and the Adda glacier which modelled the rocks into evocative shapes over centuries. This narrow canyon can be visited on a system of walkways anchored to high rock walls perched over the water. Over the centuries the gorge has had quite an effect on great writers such as Stendhal, who mentioned it in his Italian Chroniques, Johann Jakob Wetzel who described it as ‘a theatre of beauty and fright [from which] a sound resembling thunder can be heard to emerge’ and Bellano poet Sigismondo Boldoni who defined it ‘horror of horrible horribleness’. The whole town is linked to the gorge and, by extension, to the waters of the Pioverna stream which were first harnessed by the town’s ironworks, spinning and cotton mills and more recently by a hydroelectric plant.
These benefits have now been supplemented by tourism. The entrance to the site also features a pentagonal tower on three floors perched on a rock over the stream, which was famous as far back as the early 17th century but whose origins are unknown. Today it is known as Ca’ del Diavol – house of the devil – as a result of the frescoes at the top which depict the devil and other mythological figures.
Ca’ del Diavol has three floors and takes visitors through the story and origins of the Bellano area.
Journey through local history
The ground floor focuses on history: from the geology behind the Bellano gorge and its conformation and that of Lake Como as a whole by way of the exploitation of the Pioverna stream’s waters, right up to the advent of tourism at the gorge.
The second floor looks at local legends in which, as if by magic from a large book, the story of the Pesa Vegia comes to life, the oldest and most important historical costume re-enactment in the whole area, held every year in the town in early January. The third floor focuses on travel: modern visor stations literally catapult visitors into a journey which follows the course of the Pioverna stream in reverse, from the starting point of the museum and continuing to the gorge and then right across Valsassina to the peak of Mount Grigna, before returning to Ca’ del Diavol with an aerial view of Lake Como. Lovers of religious traditions might want to visit the ultra-colourful Lezzeno Sanctuary, once again in Bellano, but just to the north of the gorge. The first stone in what would later become this large sanctuary was laid on 6 August 1690. It was completed in 1694 and contains a miraculous Virgin Mary effigy located in a niche above the altar surrounded by angels which was seen to weep blood on the evening of 6 August 1688.
