The “Pequeno” path: from Barzio to Bobbio between memory and rocks
13 February 2026
The Witches' Bridge in Primaluna: between sabbaths, saints and disappearing otters
There is a hidden corner of the Valsassina, where history whispers and legend whispers to the attentive traveller. A place where stone and water have been brushing against each other for centuries, under the silent gaze of the mountains. È the “Pont di Strii”, the Witches' Bridge, an old Roman arch that can still be discovered just above the cemetery of Primaluna, along the old mule track that climbs towards Selva Piana.
It is not just any bridge. È a place suspended in time, nestled between the woods and steep walls of a small valley so silent it seems bewitched. And perhaps, in a way, it really is.
The old locals, those who still know how to read the stones and listen to the whispers of the wind, tell that in this place, on nights of the new moon, the witches of the valley gathered. Sabbaths were held here, night gatherings in which the “Strii” - mysterious women, herbalists, healers, sometimes simple loners - danced around lit fires among the chestnut trees, invoking spirits and whispering spells.
The Pont di Strii was their passage, the gateway between the visible world and that of the invisible. A bridge not only of stone, but of meaning. Those who passed over it in past centuries, they say, could hear a rustle, a quiver, a shiver down their spine. Perhaps the breath of a cape, perhaps just the wind. But no one stopped.
Yet over that bridge, laden with legends, has passed everything and the opposite of everything. The dreaded Lansquenets, In their path of plunder and devastation, they walked over it with their heavy boots, bringing with them smoke and fear. From the same arch also passed a man very different from them, St Charles Borromeo, who came to Valsassina to bring comfort and faith during his pastoral visits.
Thus the bridge - the scene of sabbaths, raids, blessings - became a symbol of what the mountain jealously guardscontrasts, overlapping truths, the sacred and the profane interwoven in the same stone.
And it doesn't end there. In the small stream flowing under the arch - today more timid, almost unheard of - once lived the Last Valsassina otters. Shy, elegant animals, silently disappeared under the blows of so-called “civilisation”: construction, pollution, carelessness. Just as the bridge itself has disappeared, collapsed in indifference, after having withstood time and barbarians for centuries.
One vanished stretch of history and nature, which today lives only in the stories and notebooks of passing chroniclers.
Walking today on the paths up from Primaluna means retracing a journey down memory lane, even though the bridge is no longer there. The ruins, perhaps, remain hidden in the vegetation. But the real bridge is the one between the listener and the teller. Between the Valsassina that was and the Valsassina that still resists.
I have been there, in that silent stretch of forest, and I can assure you that the atmosphere changes. It is as if every leaf has something to say, as if the story of the bridge is still there, just under the bark of the trees.
The legend of the Witches' Bridge is today a lesson for us all. A call not to forget, not to let the memory of places vanishes along with the stone. Because every bridge that collapses, every otter that disappears, every tale that goes out, is a piece of identity that we lose.
So, if one day you find yourself walking through the woods above Primaluna, stop. Listen. Perhaps, if the wind is right, you will still hear the light step of a witch, or the dull thud of a warhorse. Or, more simply, you will realise how much Valsassina knows how to tell, even in silence.
Freely adapted from the book:
PRIMALUNA
ITS HISTORY, ITS PEOPLE
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