Between Roots and Secrets is the new video format of Calendario Valtellinese in collaboration with Waltella Vibes. It was born from an idea I had in my head for quite a long time: to tell the story of Valtellina in a different way, by looking for those stories, those places, those characters, and those curiosities that we often have right under our noses for years and yet don’t know.

I didn’t want to make yet another video about the valley’s most famous spots. Luckily, we already know those—and they’re told really well.

I was interested in everything else.

Strange stories. Legends. Forgotten characters. A stone that seems to have nothing special, and yet has crossed centuries of history. A house in front of which we’ve walked a hundred times without knowing what happened there.

In short, that Valtellina you don’t expect—and that you might always have had just a few kilometers from home.

The idea is simple: one video a week and a few minutes to tell something about a town that, we hope, will make you want to learn more.

And, judging by what’s happening, curiosity is there.

How Between Roots and Secrets was born

One day, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought: I’m Alberta Angela of Valtellina.

Laughing, of course.

But behind the joke there was a real dream, kept in a drawer for years: to travel around the villages of our valley with a camera and hunt for the stories that here we take for granted—and that maybe no one outside Valtellina knows.

The problem was pretty obvious.

I can try with a cell phone, but the result isn’t guaranteed. And for me, video editing is more or less at the level of quantum physics.

So I contacted Alessio and Sara from Waltella Vibes.

A major generational gap, different ways of communicating, and completely different skills. That’s exactly why I thought it could work.

I told them this idea with all the embarrassment of someone bringing out a dream they’ve kept hidden for a long time.

They didn’t hesitate.

And Between Roots and Secrets – Characters and places no one has ever told you about was born.

It’s not only about picking up a camera and filming a video

That’s maybe the part that’s seen less from the outside.

An episode lasts a minute or a little more, but getting to those few minutes takes a lot of work.

You have to decide what to tell, search for information, find sources, read, verify, compare with people who truly know the story of the place, identify locations, do on-site scouting visits, organize the shoots, record, and then edit everything.

And what often seems simple isn’t simple at all.

I handle the relationships with Municipalities and businesses, and the editorial side, Sara handles research and location scouting, Alessio handles filming and editing.

And on one thing all three of us are pretty fixated: we don’t want to make up stories just to get views.

Information comes from books, documents, local historians, and sources we try to verify as much as possible. When something belongs to legend or can’t be proven with certainty, we tell it as it is.

If it isn’t certain, we use the conditional.

That’s it.

Because Valtellina has plenty of incredible stories without needing to invent more.

We started from Tresivio. And now we want to film the whole valley

Our journey began with Ca' d'Otello in Tresivio, linked to the debated theory about Shakespeare and Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza.

Then we went exploring Monte Calvario, the Verde Stone, the Stele of Tresivio and other small and big curiosities.

And every time the same thing happens.

We start by looking for a story—and we find three more.

That’s what’s making us more and more passionate about the project: the more we dig, the more we realize how much this valley has to tell.

Some we already knew.

Others we didn’t even know ourselves.

And that’s exactly the beauty of it.

Now it’s up to you to suggest where we should go

This is probably the part I like the most.

When we started Between Roots and Secrets, we didn’t know how it would be received.

Instead, episode after episode, messages and comments started coming in.

“You have to come to our town.”

“But do you know this story?”

“Here we have a place you absolutely should tell about.”

Someone points us to a legend, someone to a character, someone to a building that maybe everyone passes by but almost no one knows the story of.

And that’s exactly what we wanted.

We don’t want Between Roots and Secrets to be only our project. We’d like it to become a small shared journey inside Valtellina, where even those who follow us can help us find the next story.

Because so many times the most interesting things aren’t written in guidebooks.

They’re known by those who were born in that town, by those who’ve lived there for sixty years, by those who heard them from their grandparents.

And some of them really risk being lost.

Why we’re spending so much time and so much passion

Because we believe that telling a territory also means preserving its memory.

And because we want to make known a Valtellina that goes beyond the images that everyone has already seen.

A Valtellina made of people, stories, quirks, traditions, legends, small details, and places that might never make it onto the cover of a travel guide—but that are part of our identity.

To make each episode, we invest time, work, travel, research, and a lot of energy.

But when we publish a video and someone writes to us “I’m from Valtellina and I didn’t know this”, for us it’s already a great answer.

And the feedback we’re getting, along with the many suggestions that are coming in, is making us even more eager to keep going.

Town after town.

Story after story.

Because we’ve just started, and the feeling is that Valtellina still has an infinite number of secrets to uncover.

Local businesses can help us continue

Of course, a project like this also needs to be supported.

That’s why we decided to involve local activities and businesses that share with us the desire to make Valtellina known and to enhance it.

We don’t want to fill the videos with advertisements.

On the contrary.

For each episode we involve one single business, exclusively, connected to the town we’re telling about.

This way, the business doesn’t become an advertisement forced into the video, but enters the story of that territory—and at the same time it allows us to keep producing new episodes.

What the business that joins the project gets

• presence in the reel dedicated to its town;
• space in the in-depth article published on the blog of Calendario Valtellinese, with a presentation of the business, address, and links to its channels;
• exclusivity within the episode: we don’t include other businesses in the same video;
• the possibility to use the video on its own social media, website, and communication materials even after publication;
• the chance to link its name to a project that concretely tells and enhances the territory where it works.

Above all, however, supporting Between Roots and Secrets means allowing us to keep filming in Valtellina, doing research, discovering new stories, and telling them.

If you have a business in one of the towns we’ll visit and you want to take part in the project, you can write to edi@calendariovaltellinese.com or send a WhatsApp message to phone number 393 0806066

And if you don’t have a business but you know a strange place, an almost forgotten story, a legend, a character, or a curiosity that you think we should tell, write to us anyway.

Because maybe it will be you who suggest the next place we go to with the camera.

Watch the videos we’ve already published: YOUTUBE — playlist Between Roots and Secrets