Antonia Pozzi

Italiano

Antonia Pozzi was an Italian poet, born in Milan on 13 February 1912 and died by suicide at the age of 26 on 3 December 1938 in the same city.[^] In Pasturo Antonia spent her holidays in her parents' eighteenth-century villa at the foot of Grignone, in Via Alessandro Manzoni 1. She is buried in the Pasturo cemetery.

The memory of the poet is kept alive mainly through the activity and the website antoniapozzi.it[^] of the International Insubric Centre “Carlo Cattaneo” and “Giulio Preti” of the University of Insubria, which has made the works of the Lombard artist available. On 14 October 2014, the personal library and the paper and photographic archive of Antonia Pozzi were donated to the University of Varese by the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus of Monza, who held it through the study and care of Sister Onorina Dino.

Biography

Antonia was born on February 13, 1912, to Roberto Pozzi, a well-known Milanese lawyer originally from Laveno who held various political positions, and Countess Lina Cavagna Sangiuliani. Her maternal grandmother, Maria, whom Antonia called Nena, was the granddaughter of Tommaso Grossi. The first name was chosen in honor of the maternal grandfather. The Pozzis' only daughter was raised in a cultured family environment, showing from a young age a predilection for classical studies, literature, and poetry. From the age of six, when her parents purchased the house, she spent her holidays in an eighteenth-century villa in the small village of Pasturo in Valsassina. Antonia appreciated the simplicity of the people there, and the place instilled in her a love of the mountains. The results of mountain walks and its natural surroundings became memorable poems, because Antonia was at her best in the mountains. In a letter to Nena, she recounted her studies and reading during her holidays in Pasturo and her improvements in tennis.[^]

Antonia completed her studies at the Manzoni High School in Milan, which began in 1922 and ended in 1930. In 1927, the 15-year-old girl attended her first year of high school, becoming fascinated and attracted to her Greek and Latin teacher, 33-year-old Antonio Maria Cervi. The love of knowledge, art, culture, poetry, and, more generally, the beauty that the professor conveyed to his students was her own ideal. Antonio Maria Cervi was generous, both in the time he dedicated to his students and in the books he donated to the most deserving so they could broaden their knowledge. Furthermore, Antonia saw in the professor's eyes her own profound pain. Pozzi fell madly in love with him, not out of physical attraction or romanticism, but out of a spiritual affinity. Despite their extreme modesty, they began to live their relationship openly. Antonia was happy; this love was a powerful feeling that led her to write her first poems. Her father opposed this absolute, all-encompassing love, so much so that Cervi moved to Rome the following year to ease the tension. A bitter clash with her father, authoritarian and stern, forced him to give in for Antonia's sake, leaving an unfillable void in the girl's sensitive soul. In 1933, Antonia wrote with cold lucidity that she had given up the life she had dreamed of, not according to her heart but according to goodness. Vita sognata is a collection of ten poems, dedicated to him, in which she imagines the life she would have wanted together. They are painful words, aborted dreams, even the renunciation of a desired motherhood that she would carry with her like a burden forever. Her first suicide attempt dates back to this period.

In 1930, Antonia entered the university's Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. She struck up a friendship with her classmates, Vittorio Sereni, who would become one of her confidants, Remo Cantoni, whom she invited to Pasturo and with whom she fell in love unrequitedly, Dino Formaggio, with whom she spent much time taking photographs in the Milanese suburbs, especially in Corvetto, and cycling. Formaggio separates before friendship turns into a romantic relationship. She met other illustrious students: Giulio Preti, Guido Morselli, Alberto Mondadori. At the Braidense Library, while she was looking for a book, Lucia Pozzi and Elvira Gandini offered to help and became like older sisters to Antonia. Lucia, four years older than her, became her best friend. Antonia gave her some of her poems, which, if she hadn't preserved them, would have been irretrievably lost. After the death of the Milanese poet, Lucia took vows as a nun. In her final year of university, Pozzi attended the Aesthetics course taught by Antonio Banfi, with whom she decided to graduate. The philosophical movement of the professor and his students at the beginning of the twentieth century was known as the Milan School. In 1935, she graduated with honors with a thesis on Flaubert's literary education. Antonia reflected on the present, while her father became Mayor of Pasturo she felt alienated from Fascism, becoming critical of the racial laws.

In her spare time, Antonia cultivated a passion for the mountains, not only on her beloved Grigna, but, in 1934, also in the Dolomites and Cadore, where she skied, taking lessons from Emilio Comici, a famous Italian mountaineer, and went on short climbs; she also met the Aosta Valley guide Guido Rej. Climbing is a spiritual elevation, the same one that requires writing a poem, a journey of extreme purification to reach the absolute summit. Poetry remains her true artistic vocation, alongside photography. The girl continues to experience an incessant existential drama within her, which no activity can quell: teaching at the Schiaparelli Technical Institute, begun in 1937 and resumed in 1938, social commitment to the poor; and the project of a novel on the history of Lombardy from the mid-nineteenth century.[^]

Death

Friday and Saturday, December 2 and 3, 1938, the tragic epilogue of Antonia Pozzi's short and tormented life. On Friday morning, her students saw her crying; at 11 a.m., she felt ill and bid them farewell, telling them to be good. She rode her bicycle to a snowy field on the outskirts of Milan, opposite Chiaravalle Abbey, where she spent long afternoons studying. She sat down beside a small stream, swallowed a massive dose of barbiturates, and let herself die in the cold. It was too late when a farmer spotted her the next day and raised the alarm. Still alive, she was taken to the hospital suffering from acute pneumonia; now dying, she was taken home that evening, where she died on Saturday, December 3.
In her bag were two farewell letters, one to her parents, the other to Dino Formaggio, a college classmate, friend, confidant, and soulmate, as well as a sheet with the handwritten transcription of the poem Diana by Vittorio Sereni; to whom she wrote: "Goodbye, dear Vittorio, my dear brother." To her parents: "What I lacked was a firm, constant, faithful love, which would become the purpose and fill my entire life. Part of this mortal despair is also the cruel oppression exerted on our faded youth. I wish to be buried in Pasturo, under a boulder on the Grigna, among clumps of rhododendron. You will find me in all the ditches I loved so much. And do not cry, for now I am at peace. Your Antonia."[^]

The funeral took place on December 5th in Milan and the following day in Pasturo, in the province of Lecco, where she was buried. The family denied that Antonia's death was suicide, closed in moralistic principles of bourgeois respectability, and her father also denied it out of interest, because he held public office. The newspapers of the time wrote that the daughter of the Mayor of Pasturo, the lawyer Roberto Pozzi, died after a short illness.[^] Antonia rests in the small cemetery of Pasturo in a space of three large rocks of Lombard verrucano and shrubs with in the centre the majestic and sweet Christ of the Beatitudes, a bronze work by the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni; next to her, her father, in 1960, and her mother Lia, in 1980, were placed. On the facade of the building where she lived in Milan, in Via Lorenzo Mascheroni 23, a plaque was placed by the Municipality of Milan.

Poems, letters, photographs

Antonia Pozzi's works are poems,[^] diaries and letters,[^] and photographs. Antonia wrote poems that she was almost ashamed to divulge. In a letter to Tullio Gadenz, on 11 January 1933, she wrote: "Because poetry […] has this sublime task: to take all the pain that foams and rumbles in our soul and to calm it, to transfigure it into the supreme calm of art, just as rivers flow into the celestial vastness of the sea. Poetry is a catharsis of pain, just as the immensity of death is a catharsis of life."[^] Poetry is existential; in her letter of January 29th, she writes to him: "I live on poetry as veins live on blood". Two years later, Antonia is more mature and courageous; her admiration for Professor Banfi pushes her to read him some poetry. If until then, poetry had been her means of survival, now it becomes her identity, but none of her poetry was published in her lifetime. After her death in 1939, her father Roberto Pozzi published the book Parole, a collection of poems by his beloved daughter, published by Mondadori.

Almost forgotten, it was Eugenio Montale who discovered her, including her as the only woman among the greatest poets of the 20th century. This is how he described Antonia Pozzi's essential expressive style: "Her words are dry and hard as stones, reduced to a minimum weight. A light voice, needing very little support, it tends to burn the syllables into the blank space of the page". The great Ligurian poet wrote the preface to the new 1946 edition of Parole: "A soul of exceptional purity and sensitivity, which could not bear the weight of life". The 2009 edition of Parole is edited by Alessandra Cenni and Onorina Dino.[^]
For philologist Maria Corti, "her spirit was reminiscent of those mountain plants that can only grow at the edges of crevasses, on the brink of abysses".[^]
More recently, in 2009, a new boost to Antonia Pozzi's fame was the documentary film about her life, Poesia che mi guardi by Marina Spada, presented at the 66th Venice International Film Festival.
Antonia Pozzi's poems have been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English.[^] In 1955, the Austrian poet Nora Wydenbruck translated some of them into English. Many poems — including Tulips, Relief, The Nuns’ Waiting Room,[^] and Sterility, Breat, September, Funeral Without Sadness, Farewell[^] — have recently been translated by the American poet Amy Newmann.

Antonia steals images of what she loves most to decipher herself through poetry: mountains, rivers, the earth, flowers, trees, rocks, roads. Her extreme sensitivity, which grants her the ability to observe things with a pure soul and translate them into excellent verse, is the same weapon that pierces her and prevents her from experiencing the serenity of her youth. The theme of death is present in much of Pozzi's poetry, almost obsessively, omnipresent. Pasturo is Antonia's only refuge: "Coming here—you see it after any pain—is truly returning to the nest," she wrote in Ritorno Serale, October 18, 1933. Her studio is a true hiding place where she finds her own truth, where she can be herself to the fullest. On September 10, 1937, she writes in her diary: "Thinking of being buried here is not even dying; it is a return to the roots. Every day I feel them more tenacious inside me. My mother mountains."[^]Her feeling of being different, separate from the reality around her, is what she fears but also loves about herself; this loyalty is reaffirmed until her final choice.[^]

Photography is a different and complementary path that Antonia has explored since she was 16. Her subjects are landscapes, animals, and glimpses of Pasturo and the outskirts of Milan. Thousands of photographs have been found in the archives, many of which have yet to be studied. She herself will gift an album of 300 to Dino Formaggio: "Dear Dino, the other day you said that you can see my soul in photographs: so here they are."[^]

Suor Onorina Dino

Suor Onorina Dino is searching for a topic for her thesis in Literature at the Libera Università Maria Santissima Assunta (LUSMA) in Rome. She chooses to avoid the most famous, important, and studied poets. By chance or by direction, without ever having heard the poet's name, she read Pozzi's Parole in the 1964 Mondadori edition and is amazed at how she had written so many poems in her short life. Onorina realizes that her thesis topic would be the poems of Antonia Pozzi.[^] Since then, she has edited all of the poet's works, ensuring the rigorous philological restoration of her texts. In Pasturo, Onorina met Lina, Antonia's mother, at the house of prayer that the Pozzis donated to the nuns. By Lina's wishes, she has carefully preserved all of her papers and memorabilia, collected in the house in Pasturo, a place of inspiration and also a favorite of Antonia Pozzi. In her relentless research, with access to the manuscripts, Sister Onorina was shocked to discover that many of the poems published in the books had been tampered with by her father, involving cutting and sewing, adjusting the meter, and even changing vocabulary. Roberto Pozzi even erased entire poems, scribbling or gluing pages together; some sheets were torn, and the poems were lost forever. In 2014, Onorina Dino donated everything to the International Insubric Center "Carlo Cattaneo" and "Giulio Preti" of the University of Insubria.

Villa Pozzi

Villa Pozzi is the eighteenth-century building at Via Alessandro Manzoni 1 in Pasturo where, from childhood, poet Antonia Pozzi spent the holidays of her short life. Pasturo is a sacred place for Antonia, a chosen place for poetic creation. The two rooms that make up Antonia Pozzi's house-museum are a temple dedicated to her poetry. The building was the former residence of the Marchiondi, a noble family from Pasturo, and was purchased in 1917 by her father Roberto Pozzi.

The villa is a large three-story building, consisting of two sections that intersect at right angles, painted straw yellow, at the entrance of the gate there is a courtyard.[^] On the ground floor there were the kitchens, the garage and the stables; on the upper floors the bedrooms and the living rooms that overlooked the covered veranda. On the very top floor is Antonia's study. Behind, a large garden, from whose back gate there is direct access to the Grigna.
Since 2012, the centenary of the poet's birth, a prominent lilac-background panel, sponsored by the Lombardy Region, the Municipality of Pasturo, and Credito Valtellinese, has been displayed on the outer wall to the right of the entrance gate; it features a letter to Remo Cantoni written in Pasturo on April 14, 1935; at the top, three photographs, at the bottom the number 2. Inside the courtyard, on the façade of the building facing the street, there is a stone plaque.[^]

IN QUESTA ROMITA DIMORA
SI SVOLSE PER UN VENTENNIO
LA PENSOSA ADOLESCENZA
DI
ANTONIA POZZI
CHE ANIMÒ DI SOGNI E DI CANTI
LE MONTAGNE DELLA VALSASSINA
ESTATE 1918 AUTUNNO 1938

IN THIS SECLUDED HOME
TOOK PLACE FOR TWENTY YEARS
THE PENSIVE ADOLESCENCE
OF
ANTONIA POZZI
WHICH ANIMATED WITH DREAMS AND SONGS
THE MOUNTAINS OF VALSASSINA
SUMMER 1918 AUTUMN 1938

The two rooms are accessed from a balcony supported by grayish columns, the exterior of which features a trompe-l'oeil of the same color. The first room contains family photos, her father's documents, and some items from the Pozzi household. The cabinets contain all of Antonia's publications. Various small items belonging to Antonia are displayed in the small glass case, specifically travel souvenirs from around the world that she had been collecting since childhood.. In the hallway are Antonia's drawings and photographs. The second room is Antonia's personal bedroom, as indicated by the name on the door, where she had a small Bern bear hung. Her personal items, such as dolls and teddy bears from her childhood, are kept here, as well as skis and mountaineering equipment, portraits of loved ones, photographs she took or purchased during her travels, and, in the center, the old table, which looks out onto a window overlooking the garden, which conveys serenity, and thus onto the Grigna.[^]

Villa Pozzi is occasionally open to visitors, especially in the summer, or upon request; it hosts cultural events, mostly related to the poet. In the summer of 2016, the villa was open to visitors from Thursday to Sunday in July and every day in August until the 21st of the month.[^]
The villa belongs to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of Monza. For several years, part of the poet Antonia Pozzi's historic home in Pasturo, in the province of Lecco, has been home to the Comunità La casa di Antonia (The Antonia House Community), a welcoming and sharing space where several families from the Mondo di Comunità e Famiglia (World of Community and Family).[^]

In Pasturo, In the Footsteps of Antonia Pozzi - The Poetic Journey of a Territory

In 2012, for the centenary of Antonia Pozzi's birth, the Municipal Administration of Pasturo —led by Mayor Guido Agostoni and Councilor for Culture Nicoletta Orlandi— decided to create a permanent exhibition of words and images throughout the town's streets. Images and words are reproduced on metal panels. The cultural itinerary, titled Sulle tracce di Antonia Pozzi - Il percorso poetico di un territorio (In the Footsteps of Antonia Pozzi - The Poetic Journey of a Territory), is an invitation to everyone to discover the town of Pasturo, to whom the poetess felt deeply connected. The journey starts from Antonia's house, Villa Pozzi, for a total of 22 stages, all linked to a specific memory of the poet: the text of a poem referring to that particular place; a few lines from the diaries or the passage of a letter, always with a tangible and verifiable reference; the image of a specific place – a house, a door, a fountain, a washhouse, a small chapel – combined with photographs taken by Pozzi herself or by others, which portray her in her “Pasturesi moments”.[^][^]

Sopra il nudo cuore exhibition in Milan

An exhibition of photographs and films by Antonia Pozzi, titled Sopra il nudo cuore (Over a naked heart), was held some years ago, from October 23, 2015, to January 6, 2016, at the Spazio Oberdan in Milan. Curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Ludovica Pellegatta and promoted by the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, in collaboration with the Metropolitan City of Milan and the “C. Cattaneo” and “G. Preti” International Insubric Center, the exhibition featured approximately 300 photographs and six previously unreleased Super 8 films created by the Milanese poet. One of the events associated with the series was the screening of the documentary film Poesia che mi guardi by Marina Spada.[^][^][^] I could not miss visiting the exhibition on Antonia in Milan, as we shared the same territory, the Lombard capital and for holidays the Valsassina – Pasturo with Villa Pozzi and the Grignone is the view I admire from my home's balcony and write about —, as well as two loves, the poetry, of Dante, and the mountains, which I visit for my health, for leisure, to rediscover myself and be reborn, just like Antonia and many other vacationers, with the Grigna where I train as my favorite.

How I met Antonia Pozzi

I do not recall how I first learned about the poet Antonia Pozzi. The photographs I used to take while wandering through Valsassina and Lombardy help me avoid errors and reduce inaccuracies. The first one, dated January 3, 2007, shows the commemorative plaque on the building, that I titled it "Inscription Antonia Pozzi". I am surprised to find two photographs of the villa in my digital archive from the day of my birthday, August 6, 2007[^] and 2009, a day I used to celebrate by climbing Grignone back when the route was still Sentiero 33, managed by the CAI. So much time has passed, yet I am still here on this mountain and in Valsassina hiking! Then, I followed the twenty-two information panels Sulle tracce di Antonia Pozzi - Il percorso poetico di un territorio (In the Footsteps of Antonia Pozzi - The Poetic Journey of a Territory) that the Municipality of Pasturo had installed throughout the village in 2012. Later, I read some of her poems while preparing the first draft of this article, which dates back to 2016 and coincided with my visit to Villa Pozzi and the poet’s rooms. I was amazed to find the place intact and intrigued by the study window overlooking the green garden. I also took a few photographs.[^] The following year, on a rainy day in mid-September, I was at the Pasturo cemetery, where Antonia and her parents are buried. What moves me most of all is the poem Esempi, Anima sii come la montagna ... (Soul be like the mountain ...), which is inscribed inside the small church of the Alpini in Cornisella. I asked the speaker at an evening dedicated to Antonia to repeat the poem that begins Anima, sii come la montagna[^] (Soul, be like the pine) organized by the Valsassina, Valvarrone, Val d'Esino and Riviera Mountain Community at their headquarters in Pratobuscante, back in September 2022 I believe. It is only now that I have learned about Suor Onorina Dino, the guardian angel of Antonia’s manuscripts.

Even today, I skirt the elegant Villa Pozzi to head to go the Grignone to Alpe Cova. Upon returning from my hike, at the bottom of the descent from the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary, I do not remain emotionally indifferent to the mountain I am leaving behind and to the small gate of the villa's garden where Antonia used to step out to head for the Grigna, flanked by the red MAP 4 panel featuring a letter written in the summer of 1938 to his friend Tullio Gadenz, from Trentino.[^][^]

References

1. "Antonia Pozzi". Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
2. "Antonia Pozzi". antoniapozzi.it (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
3. "Dalle Lettere - Alla Nonna Nena - Pasturo, 31 luglio 1928 [From the Letters - To Grandma Nena - Pasturo, July 31, 1928]". Antonia Pozzi. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
4. Dino, Onorina. "Biografia [Biografy]". Antonia Pozzi. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
5. Redazione (3 December 2022). "Sabato in...poesia: il 3 dicembre 1938 muore Antonia Pozzi [Saturday in...poetry: Antonia Pozzi dies on December 3, 1938]". Civonline.it. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
6. Sampietro, Marco. Il Grinzone n. 65 (3 December 2018). "I FUNERALI DI ANTONIA POZZI A PASTURO. La parola alla stampa locale dell'epoca [ANTONIA POZZI'S FUNERAL IN PASTURO. A word from the local press of the time]". Il Grinzone. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
7. "Parole, Poesie [Words, Poems]". antoniapozzi.it (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
8. "Diari e Lettere [Diaries and Letters]". antoniapozzi.it (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
9. "Dalle Lettere - A Tullio Gadenz - Milano, 11 gennaio 1933 [From the Letters - To Tullio Gadenz - Milan, January 11, 1933]". Antonia Pozzi. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
10. Cenni, Alessandra and Dino, Onorina (9 January 2009). "Antonia Pozzi Parole. [PDF]. Progetto Manuzio. Milano città delle donne. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
11. (11 September 2010). "OMAGGIO AD ANTONIA POZZI [A TRIBUTE TO ANTONIA POZZI]". Festival Letteratura. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
12. "Works". In Antonia Pozzi. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
13. "Rare Stems: Poems by Antonia Pozzi". Harward Review. (Retrieved 31 July 2026.
14. "Five Poems by Antonia Pozzi Translated by Amy Newman". Los Angeles Review. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
15. Braguti, A. (22 October 2011). "L'autunno valsassinese di Antonia Pozzi [Antonia Pozzi's Valsassina Autumn]". La Provincia unica. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
16. Reciotti, Adele (8 January 2014). "Antonia Pozzi: La poesia dell’anima [Antonia Pozzi: The Poetry of the Soul]. [PDF]. Revistas Científicas Complutenses. Universidas Complutenses Madrid. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
17. (1 December 2009). "Nelle immagini l'anima. Antologia fotografica [The Soul in Images. A Photographic Anthology.]". Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
18. De Nadai, Diego (24 November 2016). "Suor Onorina Dino intervistata da Diego De Nadai [Suor Onorina Dino interviewed by Diego De Nadai]". [YouTube video]. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
19. Mauro Vezzoli (3 January 2007- ). "Villa Pozzi". [Google Photos Album]. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
20. Mauro Vezzoli (3 July 2018). "The plaque in memory of Antonia on the yellow wall of Villa Pozzi.". In Estate and Villa Pozzi. [Google Photos photo]. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
21. Cignetti, Annalisa P. (22 February 2021). "La Casa di Antonia Pozzi a Pasturo, Lecco [Antonia Pozzi's House in Pasturo, Lecco]". Rocaille. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
22. 6 August 2016. "Estate 2016, riapre la casa di Antonia a Pasturo [Summer 2016: Antonia's house in Pasturo reopens]". antoniapozzi.it. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
23. "Pasturo (LC): Comunità La casa di Antonia". Mondo di Comunità e Famiglia. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
24. Sala, Angelo. Il Grinzone n. 38 (25 March 2012). "Sulle tracce di Antonia Pozzi. Il percorso poetico di un territorio [In the Footsteps of Antonia Pozzi. A Territory's Poetic Journey]". Il Grinzone. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
25. "Sulle tracce di Antonia Pozzi - Il percorso poetico di un territorio [In the Footsteps of Antonia Pozzi - A Territory's Poetic Journey]". Eco Smart Land Lecco. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
26. 10 December 2015. "Sopra il nudo cuore [Upon the bare heart]". antoniapozzi.it (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
27. "Sopra il nudo cuore. Fotografie e film di Antonia Pozzi [Upon the bare heart. Photographs and Films by Antonia Pozzi]". In Mostre [Exhibition]. Arte.it. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
28. Altea, Tiziana (1 September 2016). "'Sopra il nudo cuore', d'immagini, di Antonia Pozzi ['Upon the bare heart', of images, by Antonia Pozzi]". (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
29. Mauro Vezzoli (6 August 2007). "At half past nine on my birthday, I'm already in Pasturo, ready to climb Grigna. Casa Pozzi, with its stone walls, the two right-angled facades painted yellow with the windows closed, and the street sign via a. manzoni. The peak of Grignone stands out above.". In Escursioni in montagna, Escursioni in Valsassina, Escursioni sul Grignone, Escursioni sulle Grigne, Estate, Villa Pozzi. [Google Photos photo]. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
30. Mauro Vezzoli (19 August 2016). "I allow myself to stroll through the green garden that consoled and inspired the poet Antonia Pozzi in Pasturo. From the back, the villa is only one story high.". In Estate, Villa Pozzi. [Google Photos photo]. Retrieved 31 July 2026.
31. "Esempi [Examples]". PensieriParole. (in Italian). Retrieved 31 July 2026.
32. Mauro Vezzoli (12 September 2026). "The small gate of the Villa Pozzi garden facing Mount Grigna, marking the "Pozzi Trail" (MAP 4). Set against a red background is the letter to Tullio Gadenz, written in Pasturo in the summer of 1938: "..... amidst these familiar mountains, dazzling sun from above seems to me to be mirrored is a placid lake, slow. Things become memories; love for things turns into melanchony. But, It's a peaceful melanchony: the very peace in whom is by the shore and sees the sky reflected in the calmwaters. I feel so good here; it's my babyhood house .....".". In Escursioni in montagna, Escursioni in Valsassina, Escursioni sul Grignone, Escursioni sulle Grigne, Estate, Villa Pozzi. [Google Photos photo]. Retrieved 12 September 2026.
33. (21 April 2020). "On Writing, God, and Friendship: Antonia Pozzi’s letters to Tullio Gadenz and Dino Formaggio. Cagibi. Retrieved 12 September 2026.

Pasturo

Italiano

Pasturo is an Italian town of just under 2000 inhabitants in the province of Lecco[^][^] in Valsassina on the slopes of the Northern Grigna, the starting point for many excursions. The eastern slope of the mountain is in its territory, also called monte di Pasturo or the Pasturo mountains. The town is located at an altitude of 641 metres, to the north not far away at 615 meters above sea level is Baiedo,[^] the only hamlet with a inhabited centre.
The name Pasturo, Pastür in the Valsassinese dialect, seems to indicate the fertility of the pastures, the plains and the mountains.[^] Cattle breeding and milk processing are still today one of the main activities. In 1920 the Emilio Mauri factory was built,[^] in 1960 the marketing of Carozzi began,[^] two realities of the dairy industry known throughout the national territory. For almost a hundred years, on the last weekend of September, the Valsassinesi Zootechnical Events have been held.[^]

In the center of the town there is the Church of Sant'Eusebio rebuilt at the end of the 1500s on a pre-existing one from the 1300s; the saint[^] is the patron saint of Pasturo, whose anniversary is on August 2nd. Great devotion is for the Madonna della Cintura, to whom a small sanctuary or church of San Giacomo apostolo is dedicated, a few meters from the parish church. The statue of the Madonna is solemnly carried in procession on the first Sunday of September. Anyone traveling along the Valsassina provincial road or entering the town cannot fail to notice the presence of billboards, panels, itineraries with photos, phrases, poems by Antonia Pozzi, who spent her holidays in Pasturo in the eighteenth-century family villa. The poetess and her parents are buried in the Pasturo cemetery.

In the valley flows the Pioverna torrent which flows to the north into Lake Como in Bellano. Beyond the stream, in a large flat area in the municipality of Barzio, the Sagra delle Sagre[^] is held for about ten days between August 15th, a rich display of typical products of the valley and beyond, culinary such as cheeses, and crafts, such as knives. The fair and gastronomic event attracts many visitors from all over Lombardy. Here is also the headquarters of the Valsassina, Valvarrone, Val d'Esino and Riviera Mountain Community.

A cultural reference is the quarterly newspaper Il Grinzone,[^] available online, which alongside current news, recalls some historical fact of the country, curiosities, descriptions of particular characters, excerpts from poems.

The country for me

Pasturo is an agricultural center not spoiled by tourism protected by the Grigna, where residents still speak to each other in dialect. I walked through the narrow, shady streets of the town that converge in Piazza Vittorio Veneto with the war memorial, in the Church of Sant'Eusebio I admired frescoes; I also visited the cemetery. Mainly, it is the starting point for the Grignone.

When I was leaving Milan, it was essentially the bus stop in front of the Albergo Grigna. Back and forth from Barzio, Pasturo is Via Roma, the Cariola torrent and Via Alessandro Manzoni, with Villa Pozzi and the fountain in which I quench my thirst with a vase of geraniums above it. The country is for me Via Cantellone, the two brown arrows Grigna Sett.le and Pialeral, the horizontal signpost 33 on the wall, the beginning of the Sentiero Pasturo - Pialeral. The mountain reflects the history, the Christian faith, the life and the economy of the village, through the surnames of the fallen of the Second World War in the church of the Alpini in Cornisella, Agostoni, Pigazzi, Platti, Ticozzi, Ticozzelli and all the other comrades, San Calimero, the Madonna della Cintura, the cows grazing, those who work hard by cutting and collecting hay in the meadows.

References

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