HISTORY OF THE ISLAND
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 M; 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.
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.
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 a taxi), 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.
This is because of safety
regulations due to a considerable tourist presence. By the way,
you can tour the island by bicycle: there are two bike hire
shops situated in Carzano and Peschiera. 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.
Senzano is a rustic small
village of old houses, where you find the eighteenth-century church
consecrated to Saint Severino.
It keeps an icon of gilt wood.
In this church the Saint Mass is celebrated every Sunday morning at nine
o’ clock. Shortly before the
church there is another branch on the right that leads to Peschiera
M. passing through the inside of the island (scenic road), whilst
the left branch goes up to the Shrine or to the internal small
villages Masse, Olzano
and Cure.
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
Cornaro 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Villa del 600
Carzano
Five-year
Saint Cross Feast
in Carzano
in 2010
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 2010) 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.
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 placeswhere the view of the lake disappears and the
small world of the island becomes cosier and remoter up to Cure.
From here you can only reach the highest point of the island on foot, that is the Madonna dellaCeriola shrine, 600 metres above sea level. The remote origins of the Santuario dellaCeriola 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.
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.
In
the south you will find the Saint Paolo’s island which in the
