Thomas Amsler, who now lives in the US, first visited Corippo while hiking with his parents in the region in the 1950s. He was so enchanted that he and three architect colleagues produced a book about it in 1959. They were astounded at the amount of stone used, as he recently told swissinfo.chexteal link during a visit to Be. His best known creation, perhaps, is the high control tower at Logan airportexteal link in Boston.
Amsler was interested in Corippo partly due to it being the smallest municipality in Switzerland with just 13 permanent residents. To prevent the village from dying out altogether, the old, vacant houses are being tued into a “scattered” hotel with a total of 22 beds. The Osteria (restaurant) would be the front desk and the lanes would become hotel corridors.
Even though it’s tiny, the village possesses the trappings of a much larger community: it has its own coat of arms, a village church, a restaurant, and a mayor who leads a town council.