The Sanagra Valley is in the inland of Menaggio and it is formed by the stream Sanagra that originates from the Mount Grona and flows into the lake at Menaggio.
In the past it was a valley full of industries that exploited the water’s force (mills, high temperature ovens, spinning mills, furnaces, factories that worked iron). Today it is an inter-towns park, where an easy route along the stream allows us to rediscover its past. We start from Piamuro, a grass basin above Loveno of Menaggio, and we step forward in a wood of chestnuts and then descend to the river and walk along the path that leads to the furnaces, once active for the production of several types of bricks and today a museum with didactic laboratory. Nice medieval little bridges let us cross from one shore to the other. For lunch we can stop at “La vecchia chioderia”, which is a farmhouse where trouts are bred and where we can taste local specialities.
In the afternoon we reach the hamlet of Codogna to visit the local “Sanagra Valley Ethnographic Museum”, displayed on the last floor of the XVIII century villa Camozzi, now head of the Townhall of Grandola ed Uniti. The museum houses instruments of the working and domestic life in the past, witnesses of the local history, an interesting collection of fossils coming from the local coal field dating back to 300 million years ago, a collection of animals and mushrooms from the Valley and also three dioramas presenting the natural environment in the Sanagra Valley. Starting from Villa Camozzi we pass through the old historic centre and we go down towards the river again, that we then can cross at the Nogara Bridge to go up again towards Piamuro.
