Imagining and planning a cultural itinerary in a place where historical pre-existences have deep roots and contemporary creative and research activities coexist with the imposing traces of the past is the objective aimed at stitching together places, spaces, art, the memory of the past and urgencies that regenerate village life. The BAC Bellano Arte Cultura project desired by the municipal administration in concert with the Parish of Bellano and the associations Pro Loco Bellano, ArchiViVitali ETS and Insieme per Vendrogno envisages the connection of various places in the village to induce the visitor to live a personal immersive and synaesthetic experience in nature, history, art and spirituality.
The decision to systemise all the artistic peculiarities present in the village is closely connected to the process of enhancing the Orrido, which attracts more than 240,000 people every year.
The BAC aims at redesigning the connections that are today fragmented, putting them into a network and through a global strategy of continuity.
The BAC is therefore a sort of “diffuse museum” that offers visitors, attracted to Bellano by the Orrido, an itinerary of discovery of the genius loci that includes cultural sites – churches, monuments, artists, exhibition spaces, museums, parks. An itinerary that in turn is enlivened by a calendar of events such as “Il Bello dell’Orrido” (The Beauty of the Orrido), the art exhibitions that from 2025 will be set up in ‘San Nicolao. Contemporary Art’, events such as Bellano Lirica and the New Year’s concerts, meetings, and events. The collaboration between the different actors involved with the realities that will come together in the near future, makes the project feasible through a strategy of regeneration and interconnection of different lines of action, different spaces and levels.
Since 2017 the town has embarked on a path of renewal that has transformed it into a new tourist hub on Lake Como, attracting culture and art lovers alongside hikers and simple visitors.
Bellano in the past gave birth to illustrious writers such as Tommaso Grossi, Sigismondo Boldoni, Antonio Balbiani and Luciano Lombardi. Today, Andrea Vitali’s fame attracts avid readers and tourists who want to discover the “real places” that are the setting for the novels of the “doctor-writer”.
There are also the painter and sculptor Velasco Vitali, the “water” photographer Carlo Borlenghi, the international conductor Maestro Roberto Gianola, the theatre actress Maria Amelia Monti and the copper sculptor Danilo Vitali.
The painter Giancarlo Vitali, who passed away in 2018, elevated the small village, the lake and its people to the status of protagonists of his pictorial art.An absolutely unique ‘artists/population’ relationship that has led him to define Bellano as the ‘artists’ village ‘ and to choose to invest more in culture in order to attract new tourists, expanding the services and offers dedicated to them.
