Cremia

On the lakeshore lies the hamlet of San Vito, with the chimney of a nineteenth-century silk mill and the church of Santi Vito e Modesto, the parish church until 1551 and one of the oldest on the western shore: along its side, fragments of Roman-era pots and tools have come to light, perhaps from a burial ground. Born Romanesque and reworked in the fifteenth century, it keeps from that first age a slightly leaning little bell tower of the eleventh century, with twin windows and small arches, and a wall with hanging arches and pilasters; between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a second, taller bell tower with a dome was built beside it.

Inside, stout pillars carry the pointed arches of the nave, and the cross vaults have fifteenth-century ribs; of the lower side aisles, the left one is walled up for almost its whole length. In the chancel, closed by a wrought-iron screen, a Madonna enthroned between Saints Sebastian and Roch was frescoed and signed in 1499 by Battista da Musso. At the altar to the left of the chancel is an altarpiece of 1540 by Pietro Martire della Torre: a wooden crucifix against a painted background with the Virgin, Saint John and Mary Magdalene. At the altar of the right aisle is a Madonna and Child on panel, of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, which tradition attributes to Bergognone. Both altars belonged to societies of emigrants from Cremia: the society of Genoa had the 1540 altarpiece made, and a plaque of 1568 records that the Madonna's altar belonged to the society of Florence.

On the Vignola plateau, where the castle perhaps stood, Piazza della Gloria holds together the town hall and the church of San Michele, the parish church since 1551, born of a convent of Umiliate nuns that no longer exists. Inside are the high altarpiece, which tradition gives to Veronese, the fifteenth-century polyptych attributed to Bergognone, brought from San Vito, and a canvas attributed to the Campi brothers. The hamlets are linked by mule tracks, and a path along the hillside, once the main way through, crosses the whole comune from Vezzedo to Motto.

Higher up, in the woods of the Bregagno, are the monti of Cremia, clusters of stone huts on meadows such as the Monti di Bracco; at 1115 metres, on a spur of the mountain and a step from the Via dei Monti Lariani, stands the little church of San Domenico, looking out over the lake. Prehistoric rock carvings have been found in the woods between the hamlet of Vezzedo and the next comune, and the oldest traces of a community date from the late Bronze Age.

In the Middle Ages Cremia belonged to the pieve of Dongo, and it stayed in it until the end of the eighteenth century. Under Como's statutes of 1335 the comune had to maintain a stretch of the road to Mezzola, one hundred and thirty braccia long.

In 1751 Cremia had 450 inhabitants in fourteen clusters of houses, from San Vito on the shore up to Cadreglio and Samaino. Its feudal lord was still a Gallio, Duke Carlo Tolomeo Gallio d'Alvito. Each year the council elected two syndics, two deputies and a chancellor; the consul, also elected every year, swore his oath before the feudal lord's podestà.

In 1807 a decree of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy merged Cremia into Pianello; with the Restoration, in 1816, the comune was re-established. In 1978 the polyptych attributed to Bergognone was stolen from San Michele: it was found soon afterwards in a farmhouse at Alzate Brianza, restored and brought back to the church in 1979.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Cremia spun silk and wool, in the mills at San Vito, Cantone and Prato. In 1949 the council proposed as the village's arms a silver spindle on a red field, for the many wool and silk mills that gave the people work. At Cantone, on the Quaradella stream, a small hydroelectric plant has been running since 1901.

As early as the sixteenth century many people from Cremia worked far from home, above all in Genoa and Florence. The emigrants joined together in societies that paid for altars and works of art in the village churches: in 1533 those in Genoa gave the basin of San Michele's font. Battista Pizzetti, a merchant from Cremia who lived in Vicenza, gave the altarpiece of the same church's high altar.

Motto, at the end of the comune towards Pianello, is a small cluster of stone houses gathered on a knoll. At the edge of the hamlet, in a commanding position, stands a four-sided stone tower house, perhaps of the fifteenth century, which may be what remains of a twelfth-century castle; it is a private home. Higher up, at Samaino, the oratory of San Giovanni Battista was built shortly before 1637 at the wish of the abbot Giovanni Pizzetta, for the people of the upper village; in 1973 it was sold to private owners.

The patronal feast is San Michele, on 29 September, with the fair in Piazza della Gloria. Up on the mountain, on the first Sunday of August, the feast of San Domenico is held at the little church dedicated to him.