Pontemaglio, a very old hamlet in the Municipality of Crevoladossola, is located in a pleasant position, where the Ossola Valley ends in a deep gorge, at the bottom of which flows the swift-flowing River Toce. Pontemaglio has always been a strategic place of transit and key lookout station: on one side is the mountain, on the other are the river, the road and the town.
Its name dates from Roman times, linked certainly to the fact that an audacious arched bridge was built in this part of the Ossola Valley to unite the two banks of the River Toce that drop almost vertically down to the water. Some historians think that its name derives from Mallius, the consul who crossed the Maritime Alps with his army to halt the Barbarian invasion.
The bridge, with a span of around 30 metres, was certainly the largest over which the Roman road in Ossola Valley passed and it was therefore natural that it should be known in Latin as the “Pons Majus” or “Large Bridge”. As the centuries passed, the name became Italianised to Pontemaglio.
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