News from Italy
Anna Maria Tardiolo – If you think of a magical place in Italy where you can experience the Christmas atmosphere like in a Santa Claus village, you need to reach the eastern shore of Lake Maggiore: Laveno Mombello. Nestled between the lake and the mountains, during the Christmas period it becomes a magical town. Every part of the village, including the fountains and plants, is illuminated by 500,000 LED lights. The copious snow also fell on Monte Sasso del Ferro, the most panoramic point of this Lombard town, is the backdrop to the sledges and reindeer placed along the lakefront. Wherever your gaze falls, you cannot fail to experience the joy of Christmas. In the dark of the evening, stroll through the streets whose contours are hinted at by small lights that guide the visitor as fireflies would do on a summer evening. The cold air that falls from the mountains touches your face and it is satisfying to advance to reach a fir tree lit a little further down or the luminous installations located on the lakefront while also the waters of the lake, usually blue in contrast with the green of the surrounding mountains, light up and they come alive as if to remember their existence and the duty to take care of them otherwise all this would be difficult for us to live again. Lake Maggiore: a magnificent presence admired by thousands of visitors from all over the world in every season of the year, in this period of the year and up to the Epiphany, on the banks of Laveno Mombello it has come alive for over forty years. Forty-two to be exact. When darkness falls, its backdrop lights up and the forty-two statues placed on five different platforms that make up the submerged crib become even more visible.
A work, the submerged nativity scene, born almost by chance in 1975 from an idea of Ovidio Garolla, diver from Lavana and president of the Swiss Club who began to take shape as today we can admire it, a few years later, in 1979, when at the sculptor Gianfranco Tancredi di Brendola was entrusted with the task of creating the first three statues, the Madonna, San Giuseppe and the Infant Jesus, sculpted with natural-sized white Vicenza stone. The art derived from human creation and that given to us in the custody of nature, merged for a short period of the year. The work was so appreciated that from that moment on, the nativity scene was enriched with new statues every year. The inhabitants of the village and local authorities wanted to commission new characters to obtain a submerged nativity scene currently of forty-two statues. With the passage of time and the succession of the immersion ceremony of the platforms on which the characters of the nativity scene are placed, it became an appointment that soon transformed into a very popular tradition. A solemn moment accompanied by sweet musical notes that now as then constitute the background to the switching on of the lights that also illuminate the crib. Concerts, exhibitions, appointments for the entire Christmas period alternate and the days pass happily while comets and fantastic “creatures” enchant the Gaggeto Park, bringing adults back to happy emotions of their childhood and offering children a place magical where dreaming is still possible!