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A
true mountain divides the centre of the lake into two canals;
it is steep and wooded on the south-eastern side and sloping
with terraces of cultivated fields on the western one that
is towards the shore in the province of Bergamo. It has three
main residential complexes: Siviano, which is the key
municipal town, Carzano and Peschiera Maraglio;
besides this there are eight smaller villages, close-knit
groups of houses, amongst olive groves, vineyards and chestnut
woods. In the highest spot of the island, 600 metres above
sea level, stands the Madonna della Ceriola Shrine.
Disembarking at the small village Porto, nearly in
front of Tavernola, you have the fortifying impression of
a place where the pedestrian still is the undisputed king.
On the left of the residential complex, on the shore you can
admire the Villa Ferrata, a sixteenth-century structure
restored at the beginning of the twentieth century. It has
a wing towards the lake ends with a fine loggia; adherent
the body of the villa is a seventeenth-century chapel with
perspective dome; on the portal is sculptured the coat of
arms Fenaroli, the family responsible for building
it. Behind the villa extends a wide closed orchard with vines
and olive trees.
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Above
Porto is placed the chief town Siviano, commanded by
the high baroque parish church consecrated to Saint Faustino
and Giovita. The church, standing on the area of a preceding
church and finished in 1745, has an airy interior with a nave,
with lengthened presbytery and decorations of stucco and frescoes;
a painting, representing the Last Supper, was painted
in 1651 by Ottavio Amigoni (1605 - 1661) from Brescia; the pronaos
with columns on high pedestals, are from 1759. |
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The
village is furrowed by alleys, some with flights of steps,
on which appear portals of houses with interior porticoes
and arcades. High over the roofs, rises a square tower
of regular stones, which belonged to Martinengo’s
family. Some small buses perform a municipal service
of public transport, covering the street that links Siviano
to Carzano from one side and Siviano to
Peschiera Maraglio from the other one.
A variation has been built to link the small villages
Masse, Olzano and Cure. From this
last small village, it is possible to walk up on foot
to the Madonna della Ceriola shrine. All the other
streets remain in the condition of mule tracks, along
which it is very difficult for motor vehicles to pass.
In Monteisola cars have always been abolished,
except for the few authorised for some important services,
(ambulance, parish priest, traffic policemen, quick operation,
medical service and two taxis), motorcycles are for the
exclusive use of residents, who use them to go to work.
This makes Monteisola an oasis of quiet declared by Italian
legislation “zone of particular importance for
nature and environment” and so protected. Tourists
can use only the public transport or a bicycle. On Sunday,
from April to September, a new regulation comes into being,
prohibiting people from ferrying a bicycle on public transport.
This is because of safety regulations due to a considerable
tourist presence. By the way, you can tour the island
by bicycle: there are three bike hire shops situated in
Carzano, Peschiera, Sensole.
Going towards Peschiera M. you pass near the rustic
group of Sinchignano, where a wide road limited
on opposite sides by two interesting buildings, once belonging
to the Lollio’s family. Southward there is
a mansion which shows evidence of different periods of
architecture. A pointed portal which dates from the fifteenth
century, whilst the stairs, the stony balustrade and the
painted vault are in seventeenth-century style; on the
north side of the court there is a building, probably
from the baroque period with a fine portico and cottages. |
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From
Menzino you can quickly reach the fortress Martinengo:
built in the fifteenth century by Oldofredi and
extended in the sixteenth century by Martinengo.
It has been returned, after a long period of neglect,
to the function of elegant residence, after a repair by
the architect Vittorio Faglia. It is famous locally for
the short stay of Caterina Coraro queen of Cipro
in autumn 1497. Placed to dominate a spur of the island
outstretched towards the shore in province of Bergamo,
the fortress, of square plan, has a big cylindrical keep
that surpasses the body of rectangular factory placed
in the north, with round-corner towers. A wall reduced
to a balustrade towards the south, where you have the
view of the small island of San Paolo, contains
a terracotta-floored court. You can enter through a flight
of steps where a ravine is joined by a small wooden bridge
to the portal of entry, which has big ashlar outlines
framed by pillars: on the pediment there are the words
“ex alto”.
On this level, where you can recognise the trace of a
portico, there are now the living rooms, covered by vaults
and adorned with fine fireplaces added during the repair.
The cylindrical keep serves for stairs opening to link
the other levels; on the ground floor, where there is
also a secondary entrance, there were once the stables,
joined through a flight to the main court; today it forms
the dining room with the kitchen.
On the second level there are the bedrooms and a small
fireplace. From here and from the top of the keep, as
from every window, you can enjoy enchanting landscapes.
The last repair was carried out in the sixties by the
Mascheroni’s family from Monza, the present
owner.
Legend tells that a perfidious lord of the castle was
willing to shoot fishermen’s boats with his cannon
if they did not lower their sails as a token of submission
whilst coming under the castle by the rock of Herf. After
the sinking of some boats, someone had the idea of transforming
this forced gesture into a devout tribute to the Virgin
Mary, ardently venerated on the island. So the image of
the Madonna della Ceriola was painted on the rock. The
legend says that the lord of the castle drowned while
he was trying to delete the image of the Virgin Mary.
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Foto
di Turla Fiorello - www.omaggioamontisola.it |
After
Menzino you go down to Sensole, a small
fishing village that stands in a small gulf where time
seems to have stopped like the fine moment of Faust.
Although it isn’t recorded in the brochures of the
Tourist Office, it is said that there was once a refined
English traveller who knew lake Iseo very well, and spent
ten years of her life on its shores. She was Mary Pierrepont
Worthley (1689-1762), better known as Lady Montagne,
though her words are two centuries old, they are still
true, at the beginning of the third millennium. |
Foto
di Turla Fiorello - www.omaggioamontisola.it
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| Covering
the asphalted street which follows the coasts of the lake,
called the street of the olive trees, between ancient
olive trees and sunny terraces you come to Peschiera
Maraglio, an old fishing village, with narrow alleys
(tresandei) and some nice residences with porticoes
and arcades from the sixteenth century; the church consecrated
to Saint Michele, with a single nave, was consecrated
in 1648. |
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Peschiera
Maraglio. It is enough to disembark from the ferry-boat
that shuttles between Iseo’s shores and the province
of Brescia (to Sulzano), to immediately feel the sensation
of having docked into another dimension, more stable,
quieter, more human, more surreal: old boats dozing at
the mooring, old porticoes and arcades decorated by hanging
linen and old fishing tools, women and fishermen chatting
in dialect without a care in the world.
Covering the asphalted street on the shore of the lake,
from Peschiera M. you come to Carzano.
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Foto
di Turla Fiorello - www.omaggioamontisola.it
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The
streets of Carzano are almost completely
in line with the shore of the lake.
In the north, where the street to Siviano
begins, there is the baroque church of Saint
Giovanni Battista, with an octagonal footprint
and crushed dome.
Inside the complex stands the mansion Martinengo,
a building from the sixteenth century, with a rectangular
footprint, with a short side on the street. A portal,
with the coat of arms, allows one to enter into
a courtyard dominated by the serene front on two
levels of the mansion. The eaves supported by small
corbels, are in the same style as of those of the
villa Martinengo in Sale Marasino, visible
on the opposite shore. Under the eaves there is
a fine frescoed frieze. The ground floor has a simple
scheme, with a central stairs opening into two lateral
living rooms, covered by vault and complete with
fireplaces. |
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Foto
di Turla Fiorello - www.omaggioamontisola.it
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Uphill there is a dovecote, shaped by two
overlapping rooms; the upper room is completely
frescoed with baroque decorations. In Carzano,
every five years there is a feast (the next will
be in 2005) giving thanks for the end of an epidemic
of cholera, “the epidemic of cholera ended
with the passing of the Saint Cross”. To
prepare this feast, every inhabitant of the village
and the inhabitants of the small village Novale
prepare with patience and passion thousands
of paper-flowers with which to decorate the village. |
Foto
di Turla Fiorello - www.omaggioamontisola.it
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From
Carzano you can go up through a mule track to Novale.
Novale is a complex of houses with small alleys, sheds
and houses with strong stony walls.
Higher, there is Olzano, a small country village,
where ashlar portals and porticoes with arches bear witness
to an old decorum which is evident also ahead in the small
village Masse. |
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In
Masse, portals, arcades, courtyards, and subways
compose characteristic views.
The baroque church is consecrated to Saint Rocco.
You continue, through internal small valleys, between
vineyards and small cornfields, to places where the view
of the lake disappears and the small world of the island
becomes cosier and remoter up to Cure. |
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Cure
is a pleasant small country village, with paved street
and houses with arches and balconies. It is the highest
small village of the island and it is possible to reach
it by bus. |
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From
here you can only reach the highest point of the island
on foot, that is the Madonna della Ceriola shrine,
600 metres above sea level. The remote origins of the
Santuario della Ceriola date from the half of the
sixteenth century, when Saint Vigilio, bishop of Brescia,
gained the trust in the area of Sebino and abolished the
cult of the pagan divinity “Iside” (from
which derives the name Iseo). At that time on the top
of the island the inhabitants, a few peasants and shepherds,
worshipped the pagan god “Fauno”, in
fact there is still today a stony cippus or altar on which
is carved by a rudimentary technique “FA^NI”,
pagan divinity protector of woods and country. The island
was once a forest of firs, beeches and chestnuts, from
which Silvinus (the primitive name of the lake)
and then Siviano (were named the village in the
forests ). On the place of a chapel, which it is said
to pre-exist before the eleventh century, stood in the
sixteenth century the first small church of the island,
consecrated to Virgin Mary’s purification; it was
enlarged in the seventeenth century. The inside has a
covered barrel nave; over the high altar of inlaid marbles
there is a rich sixteenth-century icon of gilt wood, with
the images of Virgin Mary with the Child between Saint
Faustino and Giovita. Under the stripping of the lateral
walls appear sixteenth-century frescoes: the bell tower
is from the eighteenth century. It is possible, from the
large square in front, to see the whole shore of the lake
and a wonderful landscape, turning in hourly direction.
For eight centuries the statue has been venerated and
preserved by the island’s inhabitants, and if someone
has doubts of the inhabitants’ faith, he has just
to go up to the Madonna della Ceriola to be stunned by
dozens of ex vows exposed. They aren’t all old; near
nineteenth-century small boards there is one of a woman
who thanks for having survived to the terrible machine-gunning
of a ferryboat (41 people died) in 1944 in front of the
port of Siviano. Many people go every year on pilgrimage
to the Shrine and every Saturday morning at 10 o’
clock the Saint Mass is celebrated. |
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Aligned
to the island, on the axis of the valley, stand two small islands
of private property.
In the north you will find the Loreto’s island,
that seems to be a small hill emerging from the water. Here
a villa in romantic style was built at the end of the nineteenth
century on a place where there used to be a fourteenth-century
convent of Clarisse, in which probably remains a part of the
chapel. The last repair was in 2000. |
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In
the south you will find the Saint Paolo’s island
which in the twelfth century hosted a monastery: thriving during
the centuries, it was cancelled in 1783 and completely demolished
with the church at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today
there is a villa, built in the second decade of the last century,
with the façade in front of Monteisola; a wall on the
shore surrounds the park. Saint Paolo’s island is today
property of the Beretta family from Gardone Val Trompia. |
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