Pigra

This guide to Pigra, a cliffside hamlet above Lake Como, opens with an odd detail: Giuseppe Garibaldi's name once sat on the honorary roll of a workers society here, though he never set foot on the village's steep mule track. You'll hear about the Cason, the stone hall the farmers and cheesemakers of Pigra built together in 1877, with a communal dairy below and a schoolroom above where children learned reading, drafting and sewing. It traces how deep the village's isolation ran, down to a local dialect and a nickname, the cats of Pigra, still visible carved into doorways today. Listen for what filled those isolated years before the outside world found an easier way up the mountain.