Laglio

The Via Vecchia Regina, the provincial road built on the remains of the ancient Via Regina, runs through the village along the water. It is also an art walk: in 2021 five sculptors, Bruno Luzzani, Fabio Ceschina, Vito Valentino Cimarosti, Massimo Clerici and Alcide Gallani, worked for fifteen days in the Parco delle Rimembranze on five marble pieces that stayed with the Comune and now stand along the waterfront, visible from the lake too.

The same route takes in the pyramid finished in 1851 and inaugurated in 1852, the tomb of the physician Joseph Frank, a pupil and later a friend of Alessandro Volta; in the cemetery behind it, the Pini tomb designed in 1945 by the architect Franco Albini, with two angels hovering between its two portals; and in front of the town hall the 1922 war memorial, with the Milanese sculptor Michele Vedani's bronze woman raising a Roman standard.

The parish church of San Giorgio, on the square of the Borgo, was built in the seventeenth century on the foundations of an older church; it has eighteenth-century stucco and friezes by Stefano Salterio, born in Laglio, and next to it stands the oratory of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, with Carlo Innocenzo Carloni's altarpiece of the Madonna of the Rosary. At Torriggia the church of San Bartolomeo was rebuilt larger in 1756; at Germanello stands the little church of San Gerolamo.

In 1771 the Riva family's “sciostra” in Laglio, the workshop from which the Ernesto Riva boatyard grew, was already building boats, launches and lucie for fishermen and traders. Along the shore stand Villa La Punta, Villa Deleuse, Villa Ortensia, Villa Marco, Villa Regina, Villa Castiglioni and Villa Oleandra; all of them are private.

The name Laglio is said to come from that of a Roman commander, Lallius, and Torriggia's from the Latin turris, “tower”. In the Middle Ages Laglio was a commune of the pieve, the old church district, of Nesso. Como's statutes of 1335 made it responsible for maintaining the Via Regina as far as the small valley on the boundary with Brienno. In the sixteenth century Carate was part of it too, and the two communities were still joined in 1644.

In 1497 Ludovico il Moro gave the whole pieve of Nesso, and Laglio with it, to Lucrezia Crivelli. On 1 June 1647 the pieve was granted as a fief to Francesco Gallio, Duke of Alvito. In 1751 Laglio had 406 inhabitants. In 1807 a Napoleonic decree joined the municipalities of Brienno and Carate to Laglio, and in 1809 the enlarged comune had 994 inhabitants. With the Restoration, Brienno and Carate became independent again.

Vines and olives were grown on the terraced slopes above the lake. In the mid-eighteenth century Laglio and Carate paid their feudal lord, the Duke of Alvito, two staia of olive oil every year, the staio being an old measure.

Laurel grew alongside the olive. Boiling its berries, the “rubaghe”, gave an oil used as a remedy for people and animals. The lake's berries were also sold in Germany and Switzerland. In the land survey of 1721–1722 Laglio declared fifty staia of berries a year, almost a thousand litres, and one staio of berries gave one and a half libbre of oil.

The Via delle Frazioni comes down in steps from the upper part of the village to the lake, over small bridges and through covered passages. The Way of the Cross also starts from the lake: fourteen chapels climb to the little church of San Gerolamo at Germanello, built in 1782 and topped by a dome.

Towards Como an almost level path, some thirty metres above the water, leads to Carate past villas of the early nineteenth century, with views of Pognana Lario on the opposite shore. It carries on by way of Santa Marta, Cavadino and Urio to Moltrasio, about an hour and a half on foot.