Product Description

View from Passo del Mezzeno over the Twin Lakes, set into the world famous peaks of the Orobic Alps, Pizzo del Becco, Pizzo Farno, and Monte Corte.

View from Passo del Mezzeno over the Twin Lakes, set into the world famous peaks of the Orobic Alps, Pizzo del Becco, Pizzo Farno, and Monte Corte.

The lakes
The Twin lakes are located in a valley called Val Brembana, in the Italian province of Bergamo. The area is rich of natural basins. Several dams were built in the past decades to collect water in the basins. As a result, about ten lakes are present today in the area that is also known as Plateau of the lakes. The water of these lakes is used by hydroelectric plants at the bottom of the valley.
Despite the name, today the Twin Lakes is actually only one lake. The name refers to the natural landscape before the construction of the dam. At that time, there were actually two small lakes. From the peaks surrounding them, each lake seemed to be the exact copy of the other one, like twins. When the dam was built, the water collected in the basin covered the small piece of land between them.
The legend
The legend tells about a young lady belonging to a rich local family and a poor shepherd living in the valley close by, Val Taleggio. They fell in love, but the lady’s father had already arranged her wedding with a noble landowner of another village.
The lady pleaded her father to allow her to marry the shepherd, but to every request was followed by a net refusal. After many attempts and tears, she resigned herself to the idea of marrying a man who would have never entered her heart, where there was room only for the young shepherd. She felt discouraged, stopped eating, and spent entire days crying in her bedroom alone. Her parents believed she was insane, so the father called the best doctors in the nearby villages to cure her daughter. No one could relieve her pain but one. It was the shepherd who, in disguise, succeeded in making the girl smile and love life again. The doctor visited the lady every day and he was so kind with her that her relatives started to doubt about his real identity and feelings.
The lovers decided to leave the village. They left In the middle of the night, heading to the mountains so they wouldn’t be discovered. When they arrived at Piano delle Casere they decided to rest a bit. Suddenly, the bells of the village started to ring: her family discovered that she had left. So they decided to hurry up and started to climb. Their gait became faster and faster until they started to run, but the girl tripped over something and hurt herself. The young shepherd picked her up and tried to keep running, but the darkness and tiredness made him lose orientation, and he slipped off a cliff.
They fell lifeless in a clearing where two basins were opened. At the center of these two basins, two sources of water began to flow and created two almost identical lakes, similar enough to be called “Twin Lakes”. The first rescuers saw the bodies of the two lovers intact at the bottom of the lakes.

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