A road is being laid at Lake Reschen in South Tyrol because it is threatened by rock falls. The drained water reveals the ruins of a village that is surrounded by legends that have been made into a film by Netflix.
Graun im Vinschgau – Many holidaymakers in South Tyrol and Italy know the fascinating picture: Coming from Landeck (Tyrol), shortly after the Austrian border with Italy, you pass a mountain lake at the Reschen Pass from which a pointed church tower protrudes. It is the tower of the parish church of St. Katharina from the 14th century, which sank with the village of Graun in the floods of Lake Reschen in the 1950s. At that time, a reservoir was built, which the town of Reschen also had to make way for.
The Vinschgauer Straße runs along the shore of the lake and, coming from Meran, leads to the Reschen Pass, over which you can continue to Landeck in Tyrol. The pass is a popular alternative route for the often congested Brenner, especially for German tourists who then come from the Fern Pass.
Road threatened by rock falls is being rebuilt
For a long stretch, the road runs directly along the foot of the Klopaierspitze and the Endkopf and for long stretches it leads through galleries that are intended to protect against falling rocks and mudslides. Before the dam was built, the road ran through the middle of the valley. However, several rock falls and landslides have prompted the province of South Tyrol to relocate the road; a new road embankment is being built one and a half kilometers further away from the mountain.
The rock and mountain falls in the Alpine region in recent months have shown how urgent this measure is. Construction work began last year. To do this, the lake must largely be drained. As a result, the ruins of the abandoned villages that were blown up in the post-war period reappear.
Photographer explores the ruins of blown up and flooded houses
The Tyrolean photographer Max Scherer recently visited the ruins and was deeply impressed. He writes of “sensational insights and artifacts” that are now available. Walls and remains of a house, a flooded building, as well as other large, widely scattered parts of the wall can be seen. “I feel like a time traveler into the past as I feverishly and curiously constantly take photos with the camera,” says Scherer.
He asks himself: “Who lived or worked here before the stone-walled house sank in the floods? Remains of walls, stones and wooden beams are the silent witnesses to an event that defined Graun and Reschen 75 years ago.”
The Legends of Lake Reschen became a Netflix hit
The approximately 1,000 residents of the villages did not leave voluntarily when the Montecatini electrical company built the dam. The planning had already begun in 1937 under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and the first farmers were expropriated and the compensation was extremely low. Because of the pastures that eventually sank in the water, 61 families out of 100 moved away. The farmers no longer had a livelihood. “The lake is rising eerily! It seems like approaching, creeping death,” wrote the journalist Sep Mall in July 1950 in the South Tyrolean local newspaper
Dolomiten
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The legend remained that the bells began to ring under certain conditions, especially in the coldest months of the year, even though they were removed before the town was flooded. This legend was adapted by Netflix for the series “Curon”, which is the Italian name for Graun. In the series, for every resident of Graun who hears the bells that are no longer ringing in their head, an evil doppelganger rises from the lake and seeks their life.