il rocco di caldè (11.655)

Visiting the comune of between Luino and Laveno Castleveccana and took a hike through the frazione of Caldè to the Rocco, a promontory that first hosted a defensive castello in the early tenth century but was breached during the campaigns of Otto I against Berengar II. 

We first passed the line processing furnaces in a rather venerable industrial park, in operation from 1280 to 1970 these kilns made quicklime for mortar, pottery and plaster and for use in agriculture by superheating limestone, the techniques superannuated by the rise of cheap petroleum. The design of the furnaces and technique were virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages. 

We next came to the a sixteenth century church dedicated to Saint Veronica that was originally a chapel and shelter for farm workers and shepherds in service of a second fortification built on the Rocco, destroyed by the Swiss in 1513 during rivalries between the French and the Holy Roman Empire and allies, the sanctuary being the only part not in complete ruins and overtaken by nature.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Dancing in the Streets (with synchronoptica), an animatronic facelift, We Didn’t Start the Fire updated plus US supreme court ends affirmative action

seven years ago: the parable of the second arrow, rolling back regulations on pesticide use in the US, Trump goes to Paris plus the US united in quackery

eight years ago: weaponising toxic-masculinity, more on ISOTYPEs plus a Golden Mean pocket scope

nine years ago: a word for relating to pigeons plus assorted links worth revisiting

ten years ago: social engineering, an optical muezzin plus placebos and nocebos