13th-18th Centuries
From its 1224 appearance as Culipo to its 14th-century spelling "Quorippo," the village shared churches, mills, and political oversight with Vogorno while perfecting the vicinato collective governance model.
Corippo appears in a testament as Culipo.
Records adopt the spelling Quorippo.
Vicinato assemblies manage paths, terraces, and water rights.
For centuries Corippo belonged to the Vogorno parish, sharing clergy, taxation, and legal forums. Despite the administrative dependence, the local vicini—household heads with hereditary rights—managed the assets that truly mattered: alps, forests, canals, and shared buildings.
Meeting on the piazza or in seasonal shelters, the vicini assigned terrace repairs, resolved grazing disputes, and scheduled collective work days. This governance culture underpins every later restoration effort because the idea of managing commons is embedded in local memory.
The parish church in Vogorno anchored religious life, but Corippo maintained oratories, shrines, and painted wall devotions along its steep streets as daily reminders of faith. The communal mill below the village core processed rye and hemp and symbolized the shared investments required to survive isolation.
Dry-stone fountains, including the 1879 basin still flowing today, tied households into a single hydraulic system mediated by the vicini. Repairing those assets was a civic obligation long before municipal bureaucracies existed.
Because outside rulers—from the Swiss Confederacy bailiwicks to Ticino cantonal authorities—were distant, Corippo codified bylaws that traveled orally through generations. Upholding terrace walls or cleaning steep paths was less about obedience and more about mutual insurance: one neglected wall could compromise neighbors downhill.
These precedents now inform how the Fondazione Corippo negotiates with residents and heritage agencies; collective stewardship has always been the default operating system.