Percorso Pluritematico del Coren delle Fate

Above Sonico, a rock terrace in chestnut woodland bears circles, cupmarks and palette forms carved into hard micaschist. The site forms part of Valcamonica's group of rock-art locations.

Why it matters

Every other stop on the valley's eight-site rock art circuit lies further south, in the band of soft Permian sandstone where the great engraved concentrations sit. The Coren delle Fate stands apart on two counts. Its rock is the tough micaschist of the Scisti di Edolo formation, coarse and difficult to cut, so the carvings are sparser yet distinctively geometric — and the site is among the northernmost engraved locations in the whole valley. On its Rock 1, Emmanuel Anati recognised the "idolo di Sonico", a composition of concentric circles and cupmarks that became one of the reference figures of Camunian studies. The site's setting in chestnut woodland distinguishes its micaschist carvings from those found in the valley's larger parks.

What to notice

The carved surfaces concentrate on Rock 1 and neighbouring boulders on a natural terrace above the town. They include concentric rings linked by lines and small channels, with cupmarks—shallow hollows pecked into the surface—between them. Anati proposed in the 1960s that these figures formed a Neolithic idol of the fifth or fourth millennium BC; later researchers have argued the composition may instead be topographic, comparable to the land-motifs found elsewhere in the valley. The official account presents both interpretations. Researchers also connect spoked-wheel figures with the sun and the sacredness of fire. Figurative drawing is rare; palette forms, outlines resembling flat votive plates, are among the most common human-made shapes.

Context and history

The site entered the archaeological record in 1950, when its carvings were first reported. Anati, founder of the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, studied Rock 1 and published the idol figure that gave Sonico a place in rock art literature. In the 1990s the researcher Ausilio Priuli identified further engraved surfaces on the slope, and that campaign of discovery led the municipality to establish the park; a dedicated valorisation project followed in 2007. The site forms part of the valley's group of rock-art parks and shares the UNESCO recognition granted in 1979 to Valcamonica's carvings: more than 140,000 figures at over 180 localities on both sides of the valley. It lies within the territory of the Adamello park.