There are walks that lead to the top. And then there are walks that bring in something: a history, an era, a way of inhabiting the mountains that no longer exists or barely exists anymore. In the Brembana Valley, these two types of walks often coincide. The three itineraries below are hiking trails of hiking difficulty-suitable for regular walkers-that have one thing in common: each step has a meaning beyond the landscape.
Slow and green steps: Via Mercatorum circuit.
Costa Serina - Cornalba - Oltre il Colle | 10.7 km | 4:30 hrs | Hiking
The Via Mercatorum is the modern name for an ancient system of roads that connected Bergamo to Valtellina and Graubünden, passing through the Brembana Valley. For centuries it was the main commercial artery of the valley: merchants, couriers, pilgrims walked along it. This loop circuit travels it in three stages between Costa Serina, Cornalba and Oltre il Colle, in one of the stretches of the valley where industrialization has had the least impact on the area.
The landscape is made up of highland meadows, villages with stone and wood architecture, settlements that preserve the peasant settlement logic of centuries ago. The ancient roads here are still recognizable in the landscape: they are not reconstructions, they are real tracks that the forest has not yet swallowed up completely. An accessible itinerary designed for those who want to walk slowly and look carefully.
Oneta ~ Sentino ~ Costa dei Lupi ~ Pradavalle ~ Bretto ~ Cornello dei Tasso
Oneta to Cornello dei Tasso | 5.8 km | 2:30 hrs | Hiking
This itinerary starts in Oneta-the village where, according to tradition, the mask of Harlequin was born-and arrives in Cornello dei Tasso, the birthplace of the family that built the European postal system in the 16th century. In between, a little less than six kilometers passing through almost depopulated hamlets, dry stone walls, porticoed vaults, a fountain-drinking trough that testifies to the ancient presence of shepherds, and an ancient roccolo on a natural saddle from which the view opens to the middle Brembana Valley.
The route includes a variant that climbs to the Church of San Ludovico di Tolosa in Bretto, the private chapel of the Tasso family of the Brembano branch, with 16th-century frescoes and a history related to the 17th-century plague. From here a path descends to Cornello dei Tasso, one of the best-preserved medieval villages in Lombardy.
Those who prefer a shorter route can choose the direct version Oneta - Cornello dei Tasso (1.4 km | 50 minutes), which follows the main stretch of the Via Mercatorum between the two villages.
Cornello dei Tasso ~ Grumo ~ Bosco ~ Dossena
From Cornello dei Tasso to Dossena | 5.2 km | 2:30 h | Hiking | 600 m elevation gain
This itinerary takes Cornello dei Tasso as its starting point and ascends toward Dossena through quiet villages and beech and chestnut forests. It begins with the small iron bridge that crosses the Brembo below the medieval village, then climbs toward Grumo, passes the church of San Rocco with its portico that has welcomed wayfarers for centuries, and passes through the hamlets of Bosco Dentro and Bosco Fuori-two cores nestled in a landscape of glades and ancient terracing.
The final section of the trail crosses the road to the Dossena mines, evidence of the long mining history of the Upper Brembana Valley, said to date back to Etruscan times. It then arrives at the open meadows of the Colle di Dossena, from which the view overlooks the entire valley. An itinerary that combines three different centuries of history in less than six kilometers: the Middle Ages of Cornello, the rurality of Bosco, the mining past of Dossena.
