Highlands Lakes

“Monte Carza is situated on the Northern edge of a vast part of the Earth’s surface, which in ancient time has moved in a single block, and includes the rest of Italy and the whole of Africa, up beyond the Cape of Good Hope.

The territory of Switzerland, instead, that we can see in front of us by the top of monte Carza, was the block with the rest of Europe and Asia.

“In between there was an ocean, as deep as the Atlantic, but not so large…”  (Delfino Insolera)

So wrote a famous vacationer of Trarego in the last century and even today his words are fascinating.

Put your feet on the top of monte Carza and feel as the writer on the edge of two huge continental blocks that colliding millenniums ago created the Alps, where once there was an ocean as big as the horizon around you and as deep as the sky above you.

Route Description

From the car-park of Grotto Carza, point of refreshment of Trarego Viggiona being restored, leave the road and take along the path following signs for Monte Carza.

You will shortly reach the lovely Chapel "Stella del Lago Maggiore" situated just below the summit, place of a frequented alpine festival held on the third Sunday of July.

From the chapel, in a few minutes, you will be on the rounded top.

The feeling is the one that had the vacationer of the last century: you stand in front of the mirror of water of Lake Maggiore and the distant plain, with at your back the rugged and rocky peaks of the Limidario Gridoni, and further back the Swiss Alps, "the wreckage of the clash, rolled up and piled up masses, are there before us: the Alps!".

In the beech woods behind the summit you can visit a military postation with its characteristical rounded shape.

Following the ridge towards the West, crossing soft ridges and remains of military artifacts, you will soon return to the starting point.