Lavertezzo
Lavertezzo is a small town in the district of Locarno. It's set a ways up in the mountains about an hours drive from Locarno the city. The road to get there is narrow and winding, much like many roads in the country of Switzerland. Drive carefully if it's rainy and foggy.
When I said that the town is small, what I I meant was that it's tiny. It has roughly 450 homes and just a little over 1000 people. But you're probably not really there to see the town anyways.
There's one main parking lot in town but if you plan on parking you'd better get there early because the lot is small and the site gets pretty busy. One thing to keep in mind as well is that there is a maximum time limit to park, which happens to be three hours. Its plenty of time to see the main attraction of Lavertezzo but not so much if you plan to do any hiking in the area.
The biggest draw to the town is a rocky gorge and the Verzasca River. Crystal clear glacier water makes its way down the mountain, slowly carving through the granite shelf and snaking its way between many large boulders, making for quite a sight to see.
Crossing the river is a double arched bridge called Ponte dei Salti, also known as the Roman Bridge. Its made entirely of stone and was originally built in the 17th century.
You couldn't tell by looking at it today but apparently the bridge was in disrepair for quite some time and had to be rebuilt in the year 1960. It looked "good as new" to me.
The view from the bridge looking out over the blue water is pretty spectacular. It's worth taking a moment to pause and take in your surroundings.
It's also not a bad spot to take a selfie, if you're one of those types of people. Clearly we are.
Once we crossed the bridge to the other side I stood there for a few minutes and tried to imagine how the bridge would have been built over 200 years ago.
I'm not an engineer so I can't really wrap my head around it. Where does one begin when building such a thing - the middle, the end or both and meet in the middle?
You're able to climb on the rocks of the gorge, but some are quite slippery when wet so you might want to wear a decent pair of shoes or hikers. You can also swim in the water if it's warm out or if you're brave enough to withstand the freezing cold temperatures, it's glacial runoff afterall.
We saw one person jump into the water when we were there. He did a pretty cool back flip off the large rock near the bridge. It was in front a large gathering of people and I think we were all very impressed by the feat. He got a hefty applause once he surfaced from the water.
But more so than the back flip, I was impressed with the natural splendor of the granite of the gorge. There were so many colors within the rocks and so many different textures created by the moving water it really was something special. There's also the size and shapes of some of the boulders that really adds to the overall marvel of the location.
Hiking
A three hour time limit on parking might seem like a lot, but it isn't a lot of time if you plan on hiking to the town of Corippo, which is about an hours walk away according to posted signs along the trail.
We left the bridge and the rocks after about 20 minutes and began our hike to Corippo.
The path is quite rocky and we were in a bit of a hurry because of the time pressure so I ended up carrying the dog in his backpack to speed things along.
It was raining lightly that day and the woods were wet and mossy, which gave the area that dark and magical forest sort of feel. There were several creeks and mini waterfalls along the way as well.
Though most of the path is deeper in the forest, there are a few locations that are a bit closer to the river. Everybody loves a good waterfall, even if it is man made.
There are also a few lookout spots along the way where you can get a glimpse of the small stone houses that are common within the area.
The day was cloudy and wet when we were there but luckily for us the visibility was still pretty decent. I liked how the clouds seemed to get caught in the trees of the mountains making the whole area looked as though it were steaming.
We moved quickly along the trail and arrived at the base of Corippo in under the estimated time and after one last steep climb along a paved road, we eventually made it to the small stone village.
Corippo
I didn't realize just how small the village of Corippo was until we got there. I originally thought that we would spend some time in town and have a coffee or a beer in café or pub on our arrival, or maybe even stop in at a bakery to get a small bite to eat.
But as it turns out Corippo only has nine residents, actually making it the smallest town in all of Switzerland.
Needless to say, there was no café or pub in town, so we weren't able to get a drink or a bite to eat.
In fact there wasn't really anything in town other than a church and a few houses and somewhat surprisingly, a very clean and well maintained public washroom. They must get a lot of visitors despite being so small?
There were some pretty great views though and I guess we can now say that we visited the smallest town in Switzerland.
As you can imagine, we didn't spend a whole lot of time in Corippo. We basically just climbed up as high as we could to get a look at the surrounding scenery and then we made our way back to the trail leading back to Lavertezzo.
Not spending a whole lot of time in Corippo meant that we still had some time left on our parking pass, so we went back to the stone bridge at Lavertezzo and spent some more time exploring the rocks and river. In fact, most of the pictures at the beginning of the post were taken during our second visit, so overall I would say that it all worked out for us in the end.