The Nevere (cold storage huts) of Monte Generoso

Elegant like amphitryons, the nevere stand proudly at the entrance to the alpine complex, almost as if they would like to receive the hikers who are wanting to know all about these relics of a civilization that is on the way to being extinct.
The nevera, is the precursor of the modern refrigerator and is nowhere else in Switzerland. It is a dry-stone construction, built near the stable and the dairy. The distance that the alpine farmer had to travel between these two zones was much less than that from the stable to the little lake pidgeonhole (“ul casel dal lac”).

The tour of the nevere

• Two thirds of the nevera’s height is set deep in the earth.
  Each of them can be as much as 7m deep
• Their internal diameter varies from 3 to 5m
• The nevera stands above the ground only for the height necessary to allow the little access door.
  At Dos Bell, it is to be found completely beneath the level of the ground and one enters into it through the cellar, like in a refrigerated cell of a modern butcher’s shop.