Verzasca

The Verzasca is a short Alpine river in Italian-speaking Ticino, only about 30 kilometres from its source below Pizzo Barone to Lake Maggiore, but in that distance it produces some of the clearest water in Switzerland. Over a bed of pale gneiss, streaked and banded in grey, white and green, it runs from glassy jade to deep turquoise, and in its pools you can see the bottom several metres down. Summer divers come for exactly that, although the currents that carved the rocks are strong and the water rarely climbs above 10 °C.

What to look at here is the stone. Along the middle valley the river has smoothed the bedrock into rounded slabs, bowls and sinuous channels, the kind of sculpted riverbed that looks almost poured rather than eroded. At Lavertezzo it passes under the Ponte dei Salti, a double-arched stone bridge built in the 17th century, damaged by floods in 1868 and rebuilt in 1960. Its two humped arches, reflected in the green pool below, are the valley's emblem, and in summer the bridge lives up to its name, which means bridge of jumps.

The valley around the river is as distinctive as the water. Its villages, from Vogorno and Corippo, long known as the smallest municipality in Switzerland, up to Brione, Frasco and Sonogno, are clusters of rustici, farmhouses of grey stone with white-framed windows and heavy slab roofs laid on chestnut rafters. The road up the valley was built only between 1866 and 1871. At the valley mouth the river is held back by the Verzasca Dam, 220 metres high, which forms Lago di Vogorno; its concrete wall became famous as the scene of the bungee jump that opens the James Bond film GoldenEye, and jumpers still go off the same crest.

Getting there

Locarno is about 25 km from the upper river, and the nearest airport is Lugano Airport (LUG), about 45 km away. The valley road starts at Tenero or Gordola on Lake Maggiore, and PostBus services run up the valley from Locarno and Tenero to the villages, Lavertezzo and its bridge among them.