Submerged Bell Tower of Graun (Lake Reschen)

Interesting facts

The tower escaped demolition because it was already protected as a historic monument when the rest of the church was pulled down.

Its bells were taken down on 18 July 1950, a week before the nave was demolished and the water rose over the village.

According to local legend, the drowned bells can still be heard ringing across the frozen lake in winter, even though they were removed before the flooding.

The first plans to dam the valley date from 1920 and foresaw a far smaller lake, only about 5 metres deep.

In July 1939 the Montecatini company presented a scheme for a 22-metre-deep reservoir; work began in April 1940 and dragged on through the war and local resistance.

Graun's villagers sought help from Antonio Segni, later Prime Minister of Italy, but could not stop their homes from being flooded.

The Reschensee covers 6.6 square kilometres, the largest lake in South Tyrol, holds about 120 million cubic metres and is up to 28 metres deep.

When the reservoir freezes over in winter, the tower can be reached on foot across the ice.

The lake lies only about 2 km south of the Reschen Pass on the Austrian border and about 3 km from Switzerland.

Why it is worth it

A medieval church tower standing up to its waist in an Alpine lake is one of the strangest sights in the Alps, and it is the only thing left above water of the old village of Graun (Curon in Italian). The tower belonged to the parish church of St Catherine, consecrated in 1357; the nave and every house around it were pulled down before the valley was drowned. What remains is a slender stone shaft with a pointed roof, rising straight out of the Reschensee close to the new shoreline.

The lake is a reservoir. Engineers of the Montecatini group dammed the upper Vinschgau near the Reschen Pass in 1947–1949, and in July 1950 the water rose over Graun and part of neighbouring Reschen. Some 163 houses were demolished and flooded and around 514 hectares of farmland were lost; about seven in ten villagers left the area altogether, and Graun was rebuilt higher up on the new shore. The tower was spared, and today it is the emblem of the whole valley and sits at the centre of the municipality's coat of arms. Its masonry was restored in 2009, when the roof was renewed and the clock faces repaired.

The tower changes character with the seasons. In summer it stands in blue-green water against the surrounding peaks; in winter the reservoir, some 6 km long at about 1,500 m above sea level, freezes over and the tower rises out of a flat white plain crossed by skaters and snowkiters. When the level is drawn down in spring, the foundations of the drowned village sometimes surface around it. The story has fed both literature and television: Marco Balzano's 2018 novel about a teacher who lived through the flooding, and the Italian Netflix series Curon (2020), which spins a supernatural tale around the tower and its lake.

Getting there

The tower stands at the edge of the new village of Graun im Vinschgau (Curon Venosta), in the far north-west of South Tyrol near the Austrian border. Merano is about 50 km away in a straight line; the nearest airport is Bolzano (BZO), about 72 km away. Without a car, take the Vinschgau railway from Merano or Bolzano to its terminus at Mals (Malles) and change to the bus to Graun; there are also direct buses from Landeck in Austria to Mals. A path runs along the shore right past the tower.

Submerged Bell Tower of Graun (Lake Reschen)

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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