Birrificio Angelo Poretti

Returning to Italy in 1877 after learning the brewer's craft in Austria, Angelo Poretti chose the Valganna valley for the purity of its mountain water and had an Art Nouveau plant built there to a design by the Stuttgart firm Bhil & Woltz. On 26 December that year the first beer was brewed, made with just four essential ingredients: water, hops, malt and yeast. The building — yellow and pale grey in honour of the beer, and decorated with masks, pilasters and garlands of hop flowers — now hosts guided tours that can be tailored for groups inside the historic plant, now owned by Carlsberg.