magnificent example of common property serving the whole community

The story of Bosco Fontana is an epic that began forty years prior to the discovery of America. A story kept in the heart of Val d’Aveto, in Rezzoaglio, with a past (also a very recent one) made up of tenacity, sacrifice, tradition, dedication and battles. And certainly the fighting spirit is not lacking in the inhabitants of the hamlets of Villanoce, Cerisola and Villarocca, who in recent years have had to defend the undivided ownership of the Bosco from the Doria fedautari, the imperial administration during the French occupation, the municipality of Santo Stefano (to which the hamlets the hamlets then belonged) and the last administration of Rezzoaglio, to name but a few. This story begins with four deeds of ownership dated 1451, 1452, 1453: Gherardo and Opicino Fontana purchased the so-called Bosco Grosso or Bosco Fontana. A forest that is still in the hands of the Fontana descendants, that is, the inhabitants of the three hamlets of Val d’Aveto: 330 hectares of woodland heritage of inestimable value, for the owners and not only for them. A resource that the newly formed Foundation wants to put at the disposal of the community and that represents a unicum in the panorama of the area and beyond. “The Foundation was founded in June of this year,” Giorgio Fontana (left in the photo above) relates, retracing its most recent history, “but before that we had collected signatures against the civic uses arranged by the then mayor of Rezzoaglio in 2017.