Zorzone

Zorzone's elevations diverge more than those of the other hamlets. ISTAT, in the localities of the 2011 and 2021 censuses, and the OpenStreetMap node give 1,016 metres; CAI Bergamo starts its trails at 1,019 metres; the Pro Loco writes 1,100 metres and the provincial tourism portal, now offline, wrote 1,050. The elevation model used by Open-Meteo gives about 1,025 metres in front of the church.

Zorzone is not on the provincial road. From the main village you leave the SP27 in via Roma, at the Piazzale degli Alpini, and take the municipal road of via Capriana, which climbs north through the meadows: from piazza Tiraboschi to the church it is about 4.8 kilometres and ten minutes or so. It is a narrow, winding road, to be driven without hurry. From the Colle di Zambla the route is about 10 kilometres, because you first have to go down to the main village.

In Bergamo dialect the village is called Zùrzù, the form recorded by the Dizionario italiano-bergamasco by Carmelo Francia and Emanuele Gambarini, and the inhabitants are zorzonesi. On the origin of the name, the Wikipedia article reports that the most accepted theory links it to the Zorzi, one of the most important local families, and considers a derivation from «Giorgione» less likely; the article, however, gives no source, and none of the sources consulted for this guide documents either hypothesis.

The village gathers around the church, and its streets bear names such as via Funivia, the museum road, via Gasparelli, via Scolari, via Giorgi, via Colombi, via Pascusa, via San Rocco and via Santissima Trinità. The S50e shuttle has a stop at contrada Santi, at the entrance to the village. To the north-east, along Val Vedra, ISTAT counts a cluster of its own, Piani Bracca, at 1,110 metres: four residents and five dwellings in 2021. CAI Bergamo calls it Pian Bracca and notes that today it is the most used starting point for Val Vedra, because you can drive there from Zorzone.

Other names worth knowing are on the trails: the Mattuida farmstead, at 1,470 metres on trail 234 towards the Menna; the small chapel of Petta, a viewpoint at the start of trail 259 into Val Parina, which Wikipedia calls the chapel of Peta and says is dedicated to the Madonna della Gamba; Ca Pasì, a place with a farmstead and the entrance of a mine used for hauling material, remembered in a testimony collected by Prima Bergamo. Above the village, on the Menna ridge, the OpenStreetMap map marks Cima di Zorzone, at 2,050 metres, with a cross.

According to the reconstruction published by Prima Bergamo in 2019, the mines of Oltre il Colle were divided into three zones: Val Vedra above Zorzone, with the Pian di Bracca mine laid out on three levels; the Arera, where from the nineteenth century an open-pit site called «Luna» was also worked; and Val Parina with the slopes of Monte Plassa. The whole complex along the Val Parina, Val del Riso and Val Vedra axis is estimated at almost 250 kilometres of tunnels. The Val Vedra mines were reopened one last time in 1970 and closed in 1982; the 1980 found in some sources is the date given by the museum's curator and by the Comunità Montana.

The tunnels are closed today and cannot be visited: near the Piani di Bracca a large entrance remains, overgrown with vegetation and barred by a gate. To go inside a mine you need to visit the show mines of Dossena or Gorno. At the Zorzone museum the mining section opens with a depiction of the Arera that the museum attributes to Leonardo da Vinci, taken from sheet 12410 of the Royal Collection at Windsor, with the hypothesis that the artist visited the basin between 1506 and 1507; then tools, a pneumatic loader on rails, the «pachèra», the workers' wagon, the «carèl», pay slips, work booklets and a panel dedicated to St Barbara, patron saint of miners.

The mining question, meanwhile, is not closed. In 2022 the Ministry of Ecological Transition issued a negative environmental compatibility ruling on the reopening of the zinc and lead mines requested by Energia Minerals, part of the Australian group Altamin, in Gorno, Oltre il Colle and Oneta. In February 2026, according to L'Eco di Bergamo, the Ministry of the Environment instead gave a favourable opinion, with conditions, on the retrospective environmental impact assessment of the exploration drilling carried out without authorisation by Vedra Metals, the group company working in the area: exploration could resume within the year, while any extraction will require a new authorisation process.

Zorzone's three classic routes are numbered trails of CAI Bergamo, with data published on the section's geoportal. All three are graded E, hiking trails, and the recommended period for 234 and 231 runs from April to October; 259 is given as passable all year, but it has exposed sections with fixed aids.

CAI Bergamo gives a different car park for each trail: via Colombi for 234 towards the Menna, via Giorgi for 231 towards Val Vedra and via Scolari for 259 into Val Parina. OpenStreetMap maps in the village a car park of about a thousand square metres between via Giorgi and via Teggiolo, a smaller one at the entrance between via Santi and via Gasparelli and one in via Colombi; a yard next to the church is marked as not open to the public.

Those heading into Val Vedra can drive up to Pian Bracca, as the CAI points out, and shorten the walk. In the village the streets are narrow: it is better to leave the car in the car parks and not along the roads.

Zorzone has a grocery with a tobacconist's counter, in via Pascusa, and the museum. Bars, restaurants, the pharmacy, bank, post office and petrol station are in the main village, 4.8 kilometres away; hotels, B&Bs and campsites mostly in Zambla Alta. The pages with addresses and phone numbers are under Food and services.

Without a car you arrive on Arriva's S50e shuttle, Oltre il Colle – Zorzone, which leaves from piazza Tiraboschi and in a quarter of an hour calls at via Capriana, contrada Santi, via Gasparelli and piazza Caduti del Lavoro. In the timetable in force from 14 September 2026 to 8 June 2027 there are seven services each way Monday to Friday, one of them on school days only, and five on Saturdays; the first leaves the main village at 6:25, the last at 18:10, and the timetable shows the connections with line B to Zogno and Bergamo. On Sundays and public holidays the shuttle does not run; in summer 2026 there were two services each way.

The municipality publishes only the total number of residents; for the hamlets the figures come from the censuses, which ISTAT processes by inhabited locality. In 2011 Zorzone had 215 residents in 82 households, in 2021 193 residents in 86 households: fewer people but more households, a sign of smaller families. Over the same period the municipality fell from 1,058 to 980 inhabitants. Locality boundaries shift a little from one census to the next, so the comparison is indicative.

Compared with the other hamlets, Zorzone has fewer empty houses: in 2011 dwellings occupied by residents were 82 out of 260, almost one in three, against one in eight in Zambla Alta. The age of the houses tells a different story too: more than a third of the residential buildings counted in 2011 were built between 1919 and 1960, when the mines were still working.

The historical research of Massimo Maurizio, published by the Blog della Valserina, speaks of «sunny Zorzone» in contrast with the cold of the main village: exposure matters, and a coarse-grid climate model does not capture it. The averages below were worked out by this guide from the 1991-2020 daily data of Copernicus's ERA5 reanalysis, downloaded from the Open-Meteo historical archive: temperatures from ERA5-Land (0.1°, about 10 kilometres) adjusted to the elevation of about 985 metres at the point of the coordinates, precipitation and snow from the 0.25° ERA5 grid, about 25 kilometres, the same for the whole basin.

The picture: about 130 frost nights a year, average lows below zero from December to March, average highs of 22 degrees in July and August, about 2,000 millimetres of precipitation and about two metres of fresh snow in an average season. These are reanalysis estimates, not measurements: a finer regional reanalysis, CERRA (5.5 kilometres), gives the basin milder winters and more precipitation.

For the trails, the period is the one given by the CAI, April to October for 234 and 231, while 259 in Val Parina is given as passable all year. The museum, according to the Comunità Montana Valle Brembana, opens on the afternoons of Sundays and public holidays all year round and from 1 to 20 August: it is the right outing for a rainy day.

The village's festivals, fairs and races are on the Events page. In winter the via Capriana road is municipal and narrow, and on the provincial roads up to the basin winter tyres or chains on board are compulsory from 15 November to 15 April.