The link to the valley floor has been viable since 1505 thanks to the bridge at Ambria. The bridge was built by the communities of Bracca and Spino after the floods of 1493 destroyed two other links with the Valley. The present bridge is a reconstruction from the 1980s of a bridge originally constructed in 1778. The ‘nightmare’ road (Orrido), the rocky 2.5 km path carved out over centuries by the Ambria creek, dates from 1882, taking ten years to construct. On cold winter days you can experience the fascinating sight of the hoar frost with stalactites, where everything crystallises creating a surreal, fairy-tale landscape. In 1596, Da Lezze wrote: “The Serina Valley is situated in a rocky, cold place between high mountains … The land is rocky and sterile, not producing grain for three months of the year, so most of the people abandon their homeland and take off around the world. The ones who stay attend to the livestock and land, woods and charcoal and the women to their spinning.”
Italian