Meride

Meride sits on a flank of Monte San Giorgio, at about 580 metres, in a basin open to the south and planted with vines, closed to the north by forest. The village is built around courtyards: narrow winding lanes run along the walls of the inner yards, which are cobbled and opened by porticoes, loggias and stone gateways. This core is listed in the federal inventory of built sites of national importance. An independent municipality until 2013, Meride is today a quarter of Mendrisio.

The name appears in writing as early as 852. In the Middle Ages the place belonged to the pieve of Riva San Vitale and to the diocese of Como; it broke away in 1483 and came under Confederate authority in 1517. The village's history is above all one of departure: its stucco workers and painters — the Fossati, the Oldelli, the Clerici — worked in Germany, Russia and France, came home for the winter and decorated their own houses. While they were away, women and the elderly kept the subsistence economy going. Their letters passed through the Casa Oldelli, the notaries' house, whose family archive is now held in Bellinzona.

Above the village, the church of San Silvestro stands on the hill where a castle once did; it became the parish church at the separation of 1483 and holds a cycle of frescoes by Francesco Antonio Giorgioli, a painter born here. In the centre of the village, the Monte San Giorgio fossil museum, rebuilt and enlarged by Mario Botta, reopened in 2012. It shows what the mountain has been yielding since 1850: more than 20,000 fossils of fish, reptiles and plants, laid down on the floor of a shallow Middle Triassic sea.

Why this place is remarkable

Two histories lie on top of each other here, an abyss of time apart. Beneath the village the mountain keeps the floor of a Middle Triassic sea, whose fossils earned Monte San Giorgio its World Heritage listing. Above it, a village built by men who were not there: stucco workers and painters gone to work in Germany, Russia and France, who came home in winter to decorate their own houses. A few of their works can still be seen.

History and origin

Monte San Giorgio is among the best known Middle Triassic fossil deposits. The region was then the floor of a shallow sea, and the sediments preserved fish, marine reptiles and plants. Scientific digs have followed one another since 1850 and have brought out more than 20,000 pieces. The site has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2003, and the land of the former municipality of Meride runs up to its summit.