The starting point of this excursion is the Santa Maria Maggiore station of the Domodossola-Locarno line of the century-old Vigezzina-Centovalli railway.
Like many other Ossola valleys, Val Vigezzo also boasts some villages rich in architecture that are more reminiscent of a small town than a mountain town. The many emigrants who, once they had made their fortune abroad, returned to bring prestige to their country by giving their families comfortable, spacious and richly decorated homes, contributed greatly to this wealth. The house, in fact, was the expression of the social condition of the owners and, just as high facades were built in the city, large chimneys were built in these towns.
Along the itinerary you come across numerous small villages, also known for being the birthplaces of successful emigrants, such as the small village of Zornasco, the town where Pietro de Zanna was born who, having emigrated to Vienna, invented the first air heater in 1834. Giovanni Paolo Femminis was born in Crana and, after emigrating to Germany in 1727, created a soothing essence, which later went down in history as "Cologne Water".
A short detour along the itinerary, not far from the oratory of Santa Marta di Craveggia, takes you along a garden in which stands a purple-red beech, 35 meters high and with a circumference of 4 metres, included in the list of trees monumental buildings of Piedmont.
Precisely in Craveggia, a village with a great cultural and architectural heritage, in the parish church of Saints Giacomo and Cristoforo, the "Treasure of Craveggia" is kept. It is a real treasure, which arrived in Val Vigezzo thanks to the connection of some emigrant jewelers with the royal family of France; the most famous piece is in fact the funeral mantle of Louis XIV.
The itinerary partly follows the route of the ancient Via del Mercato (market route), this route connects Domodossola and Locarno and, in ancient times, it was the route taken by the people of the valley who, driven by the impossible food self-sufficiency, reached the city markets to stock up on all those products that came from the fertile plain.
Traveled on: Jul 5th, 2024
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