Moltrasio

This guide to Moltrasio on Lake Como follows the picapreda, stonecutters who for centuries hauled cut limestone blocks down the village's steep streets on wooden sledges called carei, and argues the whole village was engineered as a chute for moving stone rather than laid out like an ordinary settlement. It traces the grey Moltrasio Formation limestone, quarried from seventeen sites and laid down on a seabed some two hundred million years ago, sometimes still holding fossilized ammonite shells. You'll hear how boatmen carried the stone down the lake to Como's Roman walls and its Barbarossa era fortifications. Notice how narrow the lanes stay, never widened for carts.