Corippo is a former municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. With a population of just 12 inhabitants in July 2018, and dropping to 9 by December 2019 it was the smallest municipality in Switzerland. Despite this, it possessed the trappings of communities many times its size: an official website (www.corippo.ch), its own coat of arms, a village church, a restaurant, and a mayor who led a town council consisting of three local citizens. The village had maintained its status as an independent entity since its incorporation in 1822. However, on 17 October 2020 the former municipalities of Vogorno, Sonogno, Corippo, Brione (Verzasca) and Frasco merged to form the new municipality of Verzasca with a combined population of then 640. Description Corippo is a mountain village in the Verzasca valley some from Locarno, at the north end of the artificial Lake Vogorno and from the border with Italy. The houses are built from the local Ticino granite with slate roofs and have changed little for several hundred years, leading the Italian writer Piero Bianconi to describe Corippo as "Verzasca's gentlest village". Its early 17th century Church of the Blessed Virgin Annunciata (later the Blessed Virgin Carmine) was extended in the late eighteenth century. Corippo's architectural value has caused the entire village centre to be placed under a conservation order, and in 1975 the European Architectural Heritage Congress named the village as an "exemplary model" for historical preservation. Corippo was originally part of the larger parish and commune of Vogorno (though maintaining a certain degree of autonomy), before becoming a fully independent municipality in 1822. The village first became connected to the wider world in 1883 when a road was built linking it to the Verzasca valley road. Depopulation has been a long-standing problem of the commune as scarceness of agricultural resources has driven the inhabitants, historically farmers and herdsmen, to move out to more populated areas, and within the last hundred and fifty years the village census has declined by over 94%. History Corippo is first mentioned in 1224 as Culipo. In 1374 it was mentioned as Quorippo. Geography Corippo had an area, , of . Of this area, or 0.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 64.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 0.3% is settled (buildings or roads), or 4.3% is either rivers or lakes and or 23.4%