il Becco di Dossena
EVEN THE PANORAMIC TERRACE “IL BECCO” IS NOW OPEN

A place to admire beauty

The “Becco” of Dossena is a free and free access gangway, overhanging a 250 metres high Parina Valley cliff.

The Becco (beak), the name it was given because of its shape, finds place at Culmine del Paglio, 2 kilometres from the centre of Dossena: it is a 16 metres long overhanging gangway, with a view over Parina Valley and over Ortighera Mountain. The construction was designed by “Fontana&Lotti Lorenzi – Ingegneri associati” Studio and realised by Fitzcarraldo Co. Ltd, and its realisation took about one year.

The aim of the project is to create a panoramic view that allows Dossena to complete the valorisation of its mining area with an open-air view of the rock, an element that “underground” characterises the tracks of the dismissed galleries, which are in the process of being arranged.

By climbing to the “Becco” you can feel the emotion of walking in the void admiring an immense Wilderness Area, a wild area, untouched by man for decades. “Parina” stream, which gives the name to the valley, is a particularly evocative landscape that marks out its trait with many wonderful karstic phenomena, like “the giants’ potholes” in white marble.
This Wilderness Area is partially located inside the Regional Park of Orobie Bergamasche, more precisely about half of it (Ortighera Mountain southern slope).

COME AND VISIT IT BY YOURSELF!

  • Access: free

  • Route from the car park: about 30 minutes

  • No entry during strong wind or storms

  • Reservation: none

  • Minimum age: none, but accompanied children
  • Accessibility: not accessible to disabled people
RULES OF BEHAVIOUR

Read these rules carefully

  • Maximum 50 people on the bridge
  • It’s strictly forbidden to climb to the construction during strong wind and storms
  • It’s strictly forbidden to jump, to run or to make the construction swing
  • It’s strictly forbidden to protrude beyond the outline of the parapets
  • It’s strictly forbidden to throw objects beyond the parapets
  • Children must be constantly under adults’ control
  • Dogs must be on a leash
  • Access to the facility with any type of vehicle (including bicycles) is strictly forbidden
  • Maximum 50 people on the bridge
  • It’s strictly forbidden to climb to the construction during strong wind and storms
  • It’s strictly forbidden to jump, to run or to make the construction swing
  • It’s strictly forbidden to protrude beyond the outline of the parapets
  • It’s strictly forbidden to throw objects beyond the parapets
  • Children must be constantly under adults’ control
  • Dogs must be on a leash
  • Access to the facility with any type of vehicle (including bicycles) is strictly forbidden

ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS

To get there you just have to set up “Miniere di Dossena” as your destination on Google Maps and, once you park your car in the square in front of the motocross track (easily reachable with a 200 metres long dirt track), you have to go down on a concrete downhill and enter a dirt square; at the end of it, a dirt track starts. At first, you find a concrete building called “Santa Barbara”, once a deposit of the explosive used in the mines, then you find a rise that lasts about 20 minutes. When you arrive on a plateau with a view over the entire Brembana Valley, you still have to go upwards for about 500 metres, until you arrive at a wooden staircase that finally leads you to the Becco to admire the entire Parina Valley.

BIRTH OF THE PROJECT

This construction is part of a territorial development plan that includes different aspects of the territory, such as receptivity, attractiveness, the creation of new services for the inhabitants and a new habitability of the mountain promoted by the municipality of Dossena with the work carried out by the “Gruppo Giovani Dossena” Association. This infrastructure belongs to a group of products that are often viewed with increasing suspicion by that part of the public opinion who believes that the anthropisation of the mountains has gone too far to tolerate new construction.

But it’s important to make a point: this panoramic balcony is located in an abandoned area of the old mines, in the so-called “mid-mountain”, where the risk of depopulation in around the corner, where skiing (the ultimate mountain sport) is not possible and logistics is not that easy because of narrow hairpin turns and widths that are not always suitable to the transit of two cars.

The necessity was and is to create centres of attractions, which call visitors to let them know this small town that dominates Brembana Valley and that embraces it with its sun exposure, to generate oxygen to the economy of the territory and to create new job positions.

Suffice is to say that the passages between the bridge and the mines, open for tourism, were able to create a flow of 40 thousand visitors in one year, who would have never come to Dossena and who would have never had the chance to get to know all that is beautiful and good to be seen and tasted in the “Paìs del Sul” (Land of the Sun) and which generates prosperity for an entire valley.

40 new job positions. This is the result.

And if for many people this is a meagre, almost insignificant number, for a small town that counts 880 inhabitants this is almost a miracle.