Mount Cingolo Rosso is a mountain in the Brescia and Garda Prealps belonging to the Caplone-Tombea group, a subgroup of Mount Stino, and reaches an altitude of 1,102 metres.
Physical geography Located partly in the municipal territory of Valvestino, to which the southern slope belongs, and Bondone, with the summit and northern slope; it is part of the Alto Garda Bresciano Park and the Valle del Chiese. It is a historical place in that from about the year 1027, for centuries it marked the state border, such as from 1426 until 1797 between the Prince-Bishopric of Trent and the Republic of Venice, between the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Austria from 1859 to 1918; its southern slope is traversed by a mule track that connects Bondone with Moerna in the Vestino Valley, and through it in 1166 the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa is said to have passed from Toscolano and in 1526 by Georg von Frundsberg from Germany. It was fortified in the Great War with trenches and a defensive military road.
The mountain consists of a wooded ledge connecting Mt. Calva with the south slopes of Mt. Bezplel-Cingla topped by a sharp rocky peak. The south slope, excluding the peak, belongs administratively to the municipality of Valvestino as does the neighboring Piombino Valley, and it represents an administrative anomaly in that it is configured as a Valvestino wedge in the Sabbia Valley, placed beyond the natural geographic division represented by the mountain ridge of Mt. Cingla and Mt. Stino.
Origins of the name The toponym would derive, according to some, from the Latin word cingulum meaning "belt" or "girdle" and would thus identify a strip of land bordering a cliff or ledge or even a grassy shelf between cliffs. The same meaning is given to Mount Cingla in Vobarno and the nearby one in Valvestino as well as Mount Zingla located further south. On the other hand, the name Rosso would derive from the reddish dolomitic rock caused by the presence of lichens and also because on sunny evenings, from summer to autumn, at the time of sunset, the phenomenon of alpenglow occurs, that is, the mountain takes on a reddish hue. There is further north, also in the Valle del Chiese, another mountain named Cingolo Rosso, 2,182 m high, in the former municipality of Condino in the Valle Aperta area.
The toponym is mentioned in the Atlas Tyrolensis by cartographer Peter Anich, printed in Vienna in 1774, which is the first detailed map of the County of Tyrol, and it first appears in a document in 1608 and consists of a report by the Venetian superintendent Giovanni Francesco Dolfin sent to the Venetian Senate.Provveditorato di Salò, 1978, p.46.
History In ancient times, the Cingolo Rosso mule track, which ascends for about 9 kilometers from the built-up area of Bollone to Bocca Cocca, represented the main link in use among the people of the Vestino Valley to connect with the people of the Chiese Valley, to which it was administratively linked with the feud of the Lodron counts until 1802 and to the Austrian Empire until May 1915. To allow an agile and safe passage, the route was constantly maintained, refitted at various times to military needs and widened at their own expense by the valley communities. The history of the Vestino Valley made up of merchants, peasants, cavalrymen, charcoal burners, bandits of the 16th and 17th centuries, bishops or their delegates, postal pawns, German mercenaries on their way to the sack of Brescia in 1512, the armies of the Republic of Venice in 1516, and all those coming down from northern Europe and intending to avoid the bulwark of the Rocca d'Anfo, were either headed to the Po Valley or passing through it. According to chronicles, oral tradition and legends, in 1166 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa passed through there coming from the port of Toscolano and heading to Val Camonica, while in November 1526 it was traversed by some 20,000 Landsknechts under the command of Georg von Frundsberg, who, climbing from Bondone on Mount Calva, the Cingolo Rosso and Mount Stino, descended on the Venetian Capovalle, setting it on fire and then proceeding to the Po Valley.
In May 1528, according to the accounts of the Venetian chronicler Marin Sanudo, part of the 15,000 men commanded by Duke Henry V of Brunswick-Lüneburg from Germany and headed to the Duchy of Milan to support the Spanish governor Antonio de Leyva besieged by anti-imperial French and Church State troops transited there at the nearby Bocca di Valle.
On August 24, 1796 during Napoleon's invasion of Italy, about 80 French soldiers from the Storo encampment of General Pierre Sauret's division victorious after the Battle of Castiglione on August 5 against the Austrian army and advancing into Trentino, having reached Moerna via the Bocca Cocca mule track, descended, to the sound of drums and trumpet, to Turano imposing on the Valley representatives the payment of the "war tax" consisting of 2,000 Venetian liras in cash and another 3,000 liras in grain and livestock. In return, they issued passports to the public and private citizens to be able to "handily" bring into the Valley the merchandise and foodstuffs necessary for the sustenance of the population.Brescia rassegna mensile illustrata, Brescia, 1935.
In the decade prior to 1840 the geographer and cartographer Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini ascended from Bondone to Moerna and thus described the route, which remains its only known description: "Belonging to this District Judicature [of Condino] is the extreme southern tip of Trentino situated west of Benaco and called Valle Vestina, to which the Toscolano irrigates. It can be reached from Bondone, by a path that, passing by Mount Cingolo Rosso, leads to the summit of Stino and then to Moerna after about two hours of disastrous ascents and descents, and impractical except for pedestrians...".A. Zuccagni Orlandini, Corografia fisica, storica e statistica dell'Italia e delle sue isole, corredata di un atlante, di mappe geografiche e topografiche, e di altre tavole illustrative di Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini. Italia superiore o settentrionale. 3, Frazioni territoriali italiane incorporate nella Confederazione elvetica. Parte III, volume 7, Firenze, 1840, pp. 9.
The state border and Austro-Venetian boundary markers In 1004, Trentino was raised to a county of the Holy Roman Empire by Emperor Henry II, and in 1027, Emperor Conrad II gave the county of Trent to Bishop Udalric II (1022-1055) and his successors. From then on the bishop of Trent also held the title of prince of the Holy Roman Empire and had both spiritual and temporal power in his hands. A few years later the lands of Val Vestino were again aggregated to Trentino along with the Ledro Valley, Riva del Garda, Vallagarina, the Giudicarie, Tignale, and Bagolino.
Within the principality, small subordinate entities were confirmed on estates of noble families, such as the Cles, Madruzzo, Lodron, and Castelbarco, but also different forms of organization such as the "Free commune of Storo," the "Seven parishes of the Giudicarie," the "Four Vicariates," which enjoyed a certain autonomy on the basis of recognized statutes, while also recognizing the higher authority of the Bishop and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Nationis Germanicae, while the remaining part of the territory was subject to the direct rule of the Bishop. The first documented record of Val Vestino's belonging to the Lodron family dates back to June 4, 1189, when seven distinguished men of Storo made a pact among themselves to settle all disputes that might arise over possession for the castle of Lodrone and all the possessions that a certain Calapino owned in the parish of Condino and in Val Vestino. It is presumable that from that period the mountain became a border with the territory south of the Brescia area belonging to the parish of Idro.
From 1337 to 1426 it marked the border with the lordship of the Visconti, the Malatesta (from 1404), the Duchy of Milan and later with the Republic of Venice, when on August 21, 1752 as a result of the Treaty of Rovereto, concluded between the Empire of Austria and the Serenissima, its state borders were determined again with the placement in the following year, 1753, of 20 limestone memorial stones on the borders of the Vestino Valley. Of these, No. 9 and No. 10 were placed on the Cingolo Rosso, the former at Coca di Berardo toward Mount Calva near the military mule track at an elevation of 1,140 m., the latter on the western slopes of Mount Bezplel on a hump at an elevation of 1,200 m.Lionello Alberti e Sergio Rizzardi, Terre di Confine, Brescia, 2010, pp. 111 e 112. These, after the fall of Venice in 1797, the Napoleonic and Austrian interlude concerning the occupation of Lombardy, would continue to determine the state boundary with the Kingdom of Italy from 1859 until 1918 and later the regional boundary with the Province of Trento until present times.
The legendary passage of Pope Alexander III in the Valley in 1166 An ancient legend that arose in the late fifteenth centuryPaolo Guerrini, Santuari, chiese, conventi, Volume 2, Edizioni del Moretto, 1986. tells that in late 1166, precisely in the month of October, Pope Alexander III, an exile from Rome, supporter of the free communes, pressed by the imperials of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and challenged in his authority by four antipopes, passed through the mountains of Bresciano and the Vestino Valley. This tale has been insistently reported orally over the centuries by the local population and transcribed by historians, but considered by most of them to be lacking in conclusive and concordant evidence, among them Cipriano Gnesotti, a clergyman from Storo, in his "Memorie delle Giudicarie" of 1700.Cipriano Gnesotti in Memorie per servire alla storia delle Giudicarie disposte secondo l'ordine dei tempi, 1786 writes: "I do not take the passage for true, only report in its being what I find: and for the other passage through Val Sabbia, or Val di Vestino of Pope Alexander III, whose tradition reminds us of an inscription on the exterior wall of the parish church of Savallo in Val Sabbia, and in Val di Vestino it is rumored that that pope granted there the indulgence of the Pardon on the beautiful last Sunday of August. The truth I would rather believe was this: that falling on this last Sunday the Consecration of the Rectoral Church, in which at that time an indulgence is granted in order to call therein the people to celebrate the anniversary adoration, and it was called Pardon. Certainly the attendance is great, and greater was long ago, when the national militia attended. The Bull of Indulgence does not appear to have been lost, I believe, in the burning of the rectory of Turano."