Gold was extracted from Orba's sand long before the Romans founded a town in this forested area. Rondinaria is supposed to have been an important centre for gold extraction until the end of the Western Roman Empire: during the following centuries almost all traces of this old centre disappeared and the valley was again completely covered by forests. From 1700, many and expensive efforts were done in order to find out the gold field where the precious metal came from but nobody managed to detect it.