Scanno

The road winds through the Sagittario gorge before the valley opens and the village appears, stone houses climbing above a lake that, seen from the ridge, forms a heart. On feast days women walk the steep lanes in embroidered costume, colour sharp against grey stone.

Scanno sits at just over a thousand metres in the central Apennines, above Lago di Scanno, a landslide-dammed lake whose heart-shaped outline has become one of Italy's most photographed accidents of geology. The village costume, still worn by older women at weddings and festivals, carries embroidery whose origins scholars trace variously east and argue about happily. The alleys drew Henri Cartier-Bresson and Mario Giacomelli, and their photographs still match the streets. Goldsmiths here keep the filigree tradition of the presentosa, a star-shaped pendant given as a love token, and the pasticcerie guard the recipe for pan dell'orso, the almond cake no two families make alike.