Mobility & Memory
Chimney-sweeping children, gold-seeking families, and North American miners carried Corippo knowledge abroad, sending remittances back home and seeding traditions like bullboar sausage on other continents.
Families depart for Victoria, Australia, during the gold rush.
Migration waves reach the United States for mining and farming.
Permanent residents drop to 14, while descendants continue to visit.
Before global departures, Corippo households already practiced seasonal migration between mountain alps and Magadino winter quarters. That rhythm trained families to maintain multiple dwellings and networks, easing later moves abroad.
Economic pressure pushed boys as young as eight to Milan, where their slight frames fit narrow chimneys. Wages were tiny but essential to buy grain or repair terraces back home. The Museum of the Verzasca Valley retells these stories through testimonies and 3D models.
In 1864-65, Lucini and neighboring families resettled in Victoria, launching Lucini's Macaroni Factory in Melbourne and preserving recipes like bullboar sausage. Later migrants crossed the Atlantic to work mines or farms, often returning decades later to reclaim ancestral houses.
The Verzasca Foto archive now collects letters, portraits, and feast-day snapshots from this diaspora, filling historical gaps and reconnecting far-flung descendants.