Chestnut Tree Trail
Among villages and forests in the heart of the Triangolo Lariano
The village of Rezzago offers a beautiful family-friendly loop trail with a positive elevation gain of 160 m and a maximum altitude of 790 msl. During the Chestnut Trail, you can enjoy all the surprises the forest has to offer and feel the contact with the chestnut tree, one of the most widespread plants in the Larian territory. These plants have been fundamental to the development of rural civilization.
The starting point is near Rezzago Town Hall, where you will enter the historic center and admire the characteristic houses built with typical local gray stone with reflections tending to yellow. You will walk along Via Annunciata Binda and come across the Acqua Bona Fountain. From here you will head out of the village.
At the fork you will take the mule track to the right to climb to the Enco chestnut grove. The stone walls and large boulders lining the path reveal the glacial origin of the basin. Thanks to the Ponte di Sopra, you cross the stream and reach a small rest area, located at the foot of a steep slope that leads to the chestnut grove. At the entrance to the selva castanile, you can find a "braga," a characteristic pastoral hut near a large erratic boulder. Here the road coming from Caglio crosses, along which the shorter, flatter alternative access to the chestnut grove is developed.
The Rezzago forest has a centuries-old life and is one of the largest in Lombardy. Once you reach the chestnut forest, you will come face to face with the noble trees that characterize many places, recall landscapes, histories and cultures, to the point of becoming a true cultural cornerstone. In autumn, the Enco forest is at its best, creating a fairy-tale landscape.
Continuing along the trail you will come to a junction where the Chestnut Trail joins the Trail of the "Mushrooms of Earth," locally called "Fung de tera." These are pyramids of erosion found in only a few other places in Lombardy.
Next you will pass through the valley known as "dei Morti," so named because of the burial grounds located far from the village, where the dead were buried during the plague epidemic of the 1500s. Here you will find the former Lazzaretto or little church Madonna dei Morti, where a fresco dating back to the Middle Ages depicting St. Rocco was discovered during a restoration.
After crossing the Ponte di Sotto and crossing the Rezzago stream, you will ascend along Via Annunciata Binda to reach the medieval village again. You can explore the village and arrive at an old fortification with a wall, where a square tower stands preserved to a height of about 11 meters.
The Campoè variant to the Chestnut Trail offers a shorter, flatter route to the Rezzago loop.
