The old “giazzéra”, an 18th-century building with its entrance in via Marconi, was used to store meat until 1930.
The building has an octagonal shape with a brick vault and rounded interior, a basement—about 6–7 metres deep—and roughly 1-metre-thick walls. A layer of rice husk was laid to insulate the “polenta” roof, supported by a few small plates (children used to love jumping through the small windows and playing around in the husk!).
In the winter, when it snowed, farmers would bring numerous buckets of snow and ice from the basins (Abegg, Ronco, Gnecchi) for the butcher who worked in the nearby “Curt del Vignascia” slaughterhouse. The daily remuneration was a “caurén” (a banknote equivalent to two lire, featuring the effigy of Cavour) and “du cudeghétt” (two Cotechini sausages). When snow was scarce, the butcher would resort to artificial ice in Lecco. The snow and ice were stored in the underground icehouse, compressed using a “tròch” (wooden cylinder), with the meat placed on top. As the snow gradually melted, the meat was accessed via a ladder. The building was renovated in the ‘90s.
