Fiumelatte is a river in northern

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. It flows from a cavity in the

Grigna The Grigna is a mountain massif in the province of Lecco, Lombardy, northern Italy, with an elevation of . It is part of the Bergamo Alps, and it has two peaks, Grignone or Grigna settentrionale, the higher, and the lower Grignetta or Grigna me ...

into

Lake Como Lake Como ( it, Lago di Como , ; lmo, label=Western Lombard, Lagh de Còmm , ''Cómm'' or ''Cùmm'' ), also known as Lario (; after the la, Larius Lacus), is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the thir ...

, just south of

Varenna Varenna (Comasco, Lecchese: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) on Lake Como in the Province of Lecco in the Italian region Lombardy, located about north of Milan and about northwest of Lecco. Varenna was founded by local fishermen in 769, and ...

, it has an approximate length of 250 m (820 ft). The name , composed from (Italian for "river") and ("milk"), is due to the milky white color of its water. Leonardo da Vinci while staying in Lierna studied it for a long time and mentions it in his ''

Atlantic Codex The Codex Atlanticus (Atlantic Codex) is a 12-volume, bound set of drawings and writings (in Italian) by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest single set. Its name indicates the large paper used to preserve original Leonardo notebook pages, which was us ...

''. In the 1600s the sons of the high nobility had to visit it as part of the Grand Tour to form their culture.

Overview

One of the river's peculiarities is its annual intermittency: it usually dries in the middle of October to reappear in the second half of March; therefore it has been given the nickname ("River of the two Madonnas"), alluding to the festivities of

Annunciation The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...

(March 25) and Madonna del Rosario (October 7). This phenomenon could imply that the river is the vent of an unexplored underground cavity in the Grigna, which gets periodically filled. The river is mentioned by the name in

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

's ''

'': Other authors who wrote about the river include

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

and

Lazzaro Spallanzani Lazzaro Spallanzani (; 12 January 1729 – 11 February 1799) was an Italian Catholic priest (for which he was nicknamed Abbé Spallanzani), biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily function ...

History

The village of Fiumelatte has a nearby memorial dedicated to members of a

partisan Partisan may refer to: Military * Partisan (weapon), a pole weapon * Partisan (military), paramilitary forces engaged behind the front line Films * ''Partisan'' (film), a 2015 Australian film * ''Hell River'', a 1974 Yugoslavian film also know ...

brigade shot on January 8, 1945, following the capture of

Esino Lario Esino Lario (; Lecchese: ; locally ) is a municipality (''comune'') of the Province of Lecco in the Italian region of Lombardy. It is about north of Milan, northwest of Lecco, and about from the eastern shore of Lake Como. The area aroun ...

. The six partisans were killed after returning to the valley to alert the command of the encroachment in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

References

External links

Fiumelatte
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fiumelatte (River) Rivers of Italy Rivers of Lombardy Rivers of the Province of Lecco Waterfalls of Lombardy