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April 1999

Lombardia - Bellagio

David Aaronson
2005-09-23 23:21:19

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There are only about three roads connecting the valley that Livigno is in with the rest of Italy. Two of them were closed for the season still so we followed the road through Bormio down into the lake district of Italy. Once out of the higher Alps, we crossed one more valley to the east so that we could drive down the Valle Camonica shown here. As you can see, the mountains tower over the center of the valley. The town in this photo is Capo di Ponte.

The main reason we visited this valley however, is the rock art sites that can be found throughout it. Parco Nazionale Incisione dei Rupestri contains the greatest concentration of these, and is located precariously high up on one side of the valley. For the record, you are supposed to park at the bottom and hike up to the top. We had a few problems deciphering those instructions out of Italian so we not only drove up the little cobblestone path to the top - we also went back down it in reverse. Incidentally, we know nothing about the church in this picture. It is visible across the valley from the national park.

There are over 140,000 petroglyphs in this valley. As you may have expected, the background of this page shows one heavily inscribed rock. The inscriptions are not deep, and thus can be difficult to see, even standing in front of the rock. The range in the valley is phenomenal, from paleolithic animals and neolithic designs all the way to Roman inscriptions. Those pictured here are Iron Age figures. At right is the so-called 'Deer God' believed to represent the forces of nature. Other common subjects include duels, boats, dogs and weapons.

The park itself is heavily forested and nearly every rock too big to be carried off has inscriptions on it. After staring at highlighted areas of certain rocks for some time we decided that you might have to be a trained archeologist to see some of them. Particularly interesting, some rocks had original ...

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