On the way from Sonogno out of Val Verzasca last Saturday, we stopped twice: first, at the church in Brione, and second, at the bridge in Lavertezzo.
Brione's church of Santa Maria Assunta dates to the 13th century, the interior frescoes to the 14th, and the church tower to the 16th. Our ADAC guidebook supposes that the fresco of the Last Supper must have represented a tantalizing dream for generations of impoverished valley residents: the table is laden with abundant bread and wine, steaming bowls of soup, and a whole lamb. An exterior fresco under the steeple clock memorializes that the extension of the tower in 1884 was funded by prospering Ticinesi emmigrants to California, as a gift to their friends and families back home.
Further down the valley, we and several other gawkers were wowed by the giant water-polished boulders in the Verzasca River in Lavertezzo. A double-arched stone bridge, the Ponte dei Salti, spans the river. It's a reconstruction, as a 1906 flood destroyed the original medieval bridge.
The central lesson we learned on our way out of Switzerland is that there's way more traffic on Saturdays than on Tuesdays. While we only needed a couple of hours to drive from Freiburg to Airolo, we needed the better part of the day to get out of Switzerland. There were traffic jams from Locarno all the way past Luzern. Normally, taking the St. Gotthard tunnel is faster than going over the pass. Fortunately, the pass was open last weekend, so we were able to combine sightseeing with avoiding the two hour long, automobile-exhaust-saturated wait to get into the tunnel.
Brione's church of Santa Maria Assunta dates to the 13th century, the interior frescoes to the 14th, and the church tower to the 16th. Our ADAC guidebook supposes that the fresco of the Last Supper must have represented a tantalizing dream for generations of impoverished valley residents: the table is laden with abundant bread and wine, steaming bowls of soup, and a whole lamb. An exterior fresco under the steeple clock memorializes that the extension of the tower in 1884 was funded by prospering Ticinesi emmigrants to California, as a gift to their friends and families back home.
Further down the valley, we and several other gawkers were wowed by the giant water-polished boulders in the Verzasca River in Lavertezzo. A double-arched stone bridge, the Ponte dei Salti, spans the river. It's a reconstruction, as a 1906 flood destroyed the original medieval bridge.
The central lesson we learned on our way out of Switzerland is that there's way more traffic on Saturdays than on Tuesdays. While we only needed a couple of hours to drive from Freiburg to Airolo, we needed the better part of the day to get out of Switzerland. There were traffic jams from Locarno all the way past Luzern. Normally, taking the St. Gotthard tunnel is faster than going over the pass. Fortunately, the pass was open last weekend, so we were able to combine sightseeing with avoiding the two hour long, automobile-exhaust-saturated wait to get into the tunnel.
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