Sott Piodau - Bignasco, TI, Switzerland
N 46° 20.283 E 008° 36.363
32T E 469681 N 5131683
In Maggia Valley, you find many desolated towns and hamlets because this was a very poor region. Since the seventies, hippie and alternative people discovered this valley new. Sott Piodau is a deserted hamlet, now preserved to visit it.
Waymark Code: WM13FNG
Location: Ticino, Switzerland
Date Posted: 12/02/2020
Views: 5
The Sott Piodau site is a rural settlement of great ethnographic and landscape value, recently restored through the initiative of the former municipality of Bignasco and easily accessible on foot in just a few minutes. The Piodau area (from pioda, stone slab) is a rocky strip overlooking the southern entrance to Bignasco. During prehistoric times, colossal boulders broke off from here, drastically changing the entire mountain side. In this apparently hostile, unproductive, and difficult to navigate environment, settlers obtained small pieces of land fit for cultivation and built constructions with different forms and functions: two barns and a cantina under rock; a grà for the drying of chestnuts; and the lüèra, a trap for capturing wolves and a very rare construction in Ticino.
One of the Sott Piodau boulders seems to rest precariously on the gigantic monolith next to the main road. It is called Il Fungo (mushroom) for its unique resemblance to a gigantic mushroom. Easily accessible from the main path, Il Fungo offers a splendid view of the 16th century nucleus of Bignasco and the entrance to Val Lavizzara.
At Sott Piodau natural and carved stones are integrated in a delicate and functional union that shows great sensitivity to the landscape’s possibilities, an excellent knowledge of materials, and a high degree of technical skill. Although the settlement took on its present form already in the 18th century, some structures—in particular those below rock and the lüèra—are older. Archive documents and historical comparisons date certain constructions to the 14th and 15th centuries.
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In the mid-19th century due to the storms in 1868, food shortage, economic hardship, and the gold rush many families emigrated to Australia and the Americas. Between 1840 and 1870 2000 people emigrated, manly men. Plinio Martini has described the harsh way of life in a novel called "The Bottom of the Sack".
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