Segonzano

Italian

Even if it is not a Dolomite’s area, but closed to this, Segonzano is a small municipality in Trentino Italy, which has 16 different territorial subdivisions. This small town having a quiet, kind atmosphere, is surrounded by woods reaching the western slopes of the Dosso di Segonzano and of the Ceramont, and that divides Cembra Valley from Pine’ Valley.

The lower side of the town, running down until Avisio’s stream, is characterized by the cultivation of the vineyard and the production of wine.

At the confluence of the Rio Regnana in the Avisio, it stood the old castle of Segonzano. It was built in the thirteenth century and nowadays only the ruins and its crenellated walls remain.

The main resource of this town it is not tourism. The main activity, indeed, it is the timber processing, likely in the arts and crafts and in sculpturing, the mining and the preparation of porphyry.

The reason of its worldwide notoriety, it is not thanks to its good wine, but rather to the Pyramids. These are pinnacles of land ten meters high, having a large boulder on the top. The locals define them as: “omeni de tera” meaning men of the earth.

During the Quaternary period, when the Avisio’s glaciers deposited in the Rio Regnana valley many sediments, forming huge moraines consisting of fine material amalgamated with pebbles and large boulders. The ice movement formed these accumulations thanks to the disintegration of the ridges and the decay of the flanks of the mountain. Over the millennia the water’s erosive action finally formed the Pyramids.

The reason why these natural monumental wonders, preserved in time, is thanks to the drops of water, while falling on the ground they exerted an erosive force that increased with the inclination. But the ground was not entirely removed, through the mixed composition of the materials. Therefore, the rock debris, like the several boulders randomly scattered by the old icing, became shelter from the inexorable water’s erosive action.

The Pyramids assume many shapes, like the “Pointed Pyramids” with tapered shank, and lacking of the shelter mass, or they have a comb shape, having a blade of land jagged and sharp, of which the shape is due to the thinning of watershed between two canals.

It can happen sometimes, that the Pyramids are placed as organ pipes. What is possible to see in Segonzano is a pure spectacular scenery.