Tom`s travels: Sulzano & Naquane Rock Drawings National Park (04/10/2020)

After flying back to Italy for a few days I decided to spend some time visiting my brother in Milan. On a Sunday we decided to head east and visit a few places which we had hoped to see for a long time. We took the chance to go there with my mother and grandmother who drove from Vicenza and met us halfway in the town of Rovato. Along with us came also our friend Marco who we met at Milan's train station. From there we then took a regional train and reach the town of Rovato where my mom and grandma picked used up to drive on towards Lake Iseo. There we reached the small town of Sulzano, located on the eastern shore of the lake. The town is now famous as in 2016 it temporarily hosted the work of land art by the artist Christo called The Floating Piers, a yellow floating pier that joined Sulzano to Monte Isola, the island in the middle of the lake. The floating pier is not there anymore, but the town itself is a nice gem on the lakeshore with a pretty old town and beautiful views of the lake and the surrounding mountains. The Monte Isola, the island, is located right in front of Sulzano. It is Italy's largest lake island and the one in Europe which reaches the highest altitude. After walking around we decided to grab a little snack and coffee at one of the small bars in the old town. Then we got back in the car and drove on to our next destination. We headed northwards and after coasting the lake reached the long Val Camonica, eventually leaving the main road and driving up a hill through a forest and stopping at the Naquane Rock Drawings National Park entrance. Here we parked the car and continued on foot, reaching then the ticket office where we bought the tickets to enter the national park. This national park is part of the larger complex of parks (8 in total) that dot the valley. In fact, the area is known for holding the largest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs in the world scattered throughout its territory. These rock drawings were made during a period of 8000 years up until the Iron Age (around the 1st millennium BC) directly on the surfaces revealed as the last glacier to form the valley retreated approximately 15,000 years ago. Due to their nature and importance, the drawings were inscribed in the Unesco World Heritage List as Italy's first site back in 1979. Nowadays between 200,000 and 300,000 drawings have been revealed and cataloged. We had decided to visit the site of Naquane due to its size and importance of the petroglyphs contained which would be a great sample to see and understand the whole topic. The park was spread out over the forest-covered hill and featured large formations of rocks where the drawings were carved. The rocks had a number and contained figures relating to different aspects of those past inhabitants' lives. Among the figures were those featuring humanoids, animals, and even mythological figures. They mostly had no chronological or logical order and most of the time are not meant to represent the figure or object faithfully but rather its idea. The most common topics are those relating to religious rites, hunting scenes, or fights. Some of the noteworthy figures included that of the God Cernunnos, an ancient Celtic deity, a running priest, a labyrinth, huts, and deer. As we walked around we admired the beautifully carved images and were glad we were the only visitors there at the time. We stayed for nearly two hours and could've stayed longer had it not been that both my mother and grandma were starting to get tired and hungry. So after leaving the site, we headed back in the car and drove to the nearby town of Capo di Ponte where we managed to find a place that had just closed but was able to make us some sandwiches. Right next to the restaurant, while my grandma and mom were resting a bit, my brother, Marco and I found out one of the other sites where the drawings are present. This one, the Parco Archeologico Nazionale dei Massi di Cemmo, consists of two large sandstone boulders right next to each other which had fallen in remote times; the inhabitants of the area then carved figures on those same stones starting from the 3rd millennium BC. After seeing the beautiful carvings, which did not require a ticket to visit as they are set in the middle of a grassy field next to the road, we then walked further uphill behind the town center. Not far ahead we then reached a nice church, the Pieve di San Siro. Built on a rocky outcrop above the town and the Oglio river it dates to the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th centuries. Unfortunately, it was closed so we could not visit its interior which surely would have been a marvel, however, we still were able to see the nicely decorated portal and the romanesque structure of the nave and bell tower from the outside. We then decided to head back and meet up with my mother and grandmother to then drive back to Rovato where we took then the train back to Milan.