PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT NEW LIFE FOR OLD WALLS The place that is hosting us today is very characteristic regarding its settlement, structure and environment and is undoubtedly very charming thanks to the fact that it has maintained over a long period of time of ups and downs up to our days its peculiar characteristic of being a special and “separated” place, a “small world” as the latest affectionate publication calls it. It owes its charm to some special elements that have marked its history, that are still existing and vital and that deserve to be conserved through the efforts of the whole human community. A schematic but realistic simplification indicates these distinctive elements in the following: -the peculiarity of the structure that, built in different periods, forced into different use not always congruent with its intended use, has maintained its fascination and charm which it owes partly to its being located in a protected conservation area; these characteristics have never disappeared in the course of the centuries and have originated a steadily exerted use-value well preserved in people’s memories , -the strong sense of belonging that people living in the San Martino Valley territory have always felt towards the sanctuary, not only for reasons we strictly speaking call devotional, but also related to moments of everyday life and important events in life (weddings, funerals, festivals, festivities, fairs). -its ability to receive different and even disparate habitations (from the hermits who built it to the being run by the Servites and to its significance for the faithful of all parishes in the territory) and its ability to activate synergies and sometimes important private investments in more recent times, from its reopening after the desaster caused by the Second World War to forces and synergies employed in occasion of its recent restoration, -its ability to offer to be an experimental laboratory for abilities and techniques in which all seemed to resume work where others had had to quit. It is because of these peculiarities that continously come up in the life of this building complex that I deem a short excursion into its history is useful; our project is in ideal continuity with the history. 1) The history The old monastery of the Friar Servants of Mary, the Servites, and the church dedicated to Santa Maria del Lavello is situated on the left bank of the river Adda where, in ancient times, the rapid stream slackened its speed and it was possible to ford from one bank to the other. In about the year 1000 a castle was built there to defend the ford. Around it there was a small village where fishermen and peasants lived. In the interior land a road ran linking Bergamo to Como and to the Alpine passes. By the castle there was the small church of San Simpliciano which would later be dedicated to Our Lady. That humble little church had only one nave measuring eight times four and a half meters and had a painted altar. In all likelyhood this castle and this church mattered in the 12th century battles between the Lombard communes and the Empire. Without fail we know that in the first half of the 13th century the Lavello was under the jurisdiction of the commune of Bergamo. Towards the end of the century the castle was destroyed during the battles led by Bernabò Visconti which devastated the plain of the Lavello, and the village shrunk to a very meagre community. The Peace of Lodi in 1454 established that the two banks of the river Adda be the definite frontier between the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice. Some hermits took shelter among the ruins of the ancient buildings near the rustic chapel still there in 1438. Of one of them, by the name of Jacopino, is said that after receiving a Divine order he began to build a bigger church. In April 1480, while the church was under construction, a spring gushed out under an ancient grave. The news spread very quickly and not long after a mother took her completely paralized child to that spring. She washed him in the spring and all those present were amazed at seeing him walk thereafter. Immediately people began to pilgrimage to that place which became so widely known that in about the year 1486 some friars Servants of Mary came from Bergamo and helped in building the new church.
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