Acquafraggia Waterfall

The Acquafraggia waterfall drops in a series of cascades down the rocky face of the hillside above Piuro, a couple of kilometres from Chiavenna. It is one of the more dramatic waterfalls in the Italian Alps — not the tallest, but impressive for its width and the violence of the water in spring when the snow is melting. A path from the road leads to the base of the falls in about twenty minutes.

The village of Piuro above the waterfall was entirely buried by a landslide in 1618 — a catastrophic event that killed some 2,000 people and obliterated a prosperous community almost without trace. The local museum in Chiavenna tells the story, and faint remains of the village can occasionally be seen when drought lowers the water table.

things to do sight
A story
Leonardo da Vinci sketched the Acquafraggia on one of his journeys through the alpine passes. His drawing, now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, is one of the earliest attempts in European art to accurately depict moving water — the falls apparently struck him as a technical challenge worth studying.

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