Lezzeno

In the age of the communes Lezzeno's land was taken into the fortifications of the Isola Comacina, and in 1120, during the Ten Years' War between Como and Milan, the village was destroyed by the men of Como because it had sided with Milan. From that time the stump of a tower survives at Castello, a little above Rozzo, the same one that appears on the coat of arms. The most important post, though, was on the Punta della Cavagnola, which signalled to the Valle d'Intelvi and to the basin of the Isola, and at Morbia another stronghold later became Palazzo Silva. In the fourteenth century Rozzo was the seat of the magistrate's court, and remains of its cells are built into later houses; at the Cavagnola the bell tower of the church of San Nicolò, since demolished, served for centuries as a beacon for boatmen, because the waters off Lezzeno are often stormy.

The parish church of Santi Quirico e Giulitta, on Piazza Roma, keeps Giulio Quaglio's great paintings of 1712 in the presbytery, and beside it the oratory of Santa Marta, dating from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, holds a Deposition by Andrea de Passeris. On the shore at Pescaù, the church of San Giuseppe was built in 1677–1678 on an octagonal plan, right by the lake. From Calvasino a flight of steps lined with the chapels of the Way of the Cross climbs to the church of the Santissima Trinità, and there are more small churches at Sormazzana, Bagnana and Villa.

The octagonal church of San Giuseppe at Pescaù was built at the expense of the Bellini family. In the parish church, the second chapel on the left was dedicated to Saint Roch until 1632; at the end of the seventeenth century Pietro Giacomo Silva enlarged it, had it decorated at his own expense and dedicated it to Our Lady of Caravaggio.

The presbytery was decorated early in the eighteenth century: in 1712 Giulio Quaglio painted the martyrdom of Saints Quiricus and Julitta on the end wall and their glory on the vault. The high altar was rebuilt in 1719, and in 1726 the heirs of the curate Taddeo Bertolio had the ciborium with twisted columns made. Until 1780 the church was a sub-parish of the pieve of Isola; that year Giambattista Muggiasca, Bishop of Como, made it a parish in its own right.

The last stretch of shore towards Bellagio is almost uninhabited, with sheer walls, gorges and deep ravines: these are the Sassi Grosgalli, whose hollows and clefts can only be seen properly from the lake. Here opens the cave of the Carpi or of the Bulberi, now called the Grotta Azzurra, which is visited by boat. Tradition has it that the bulberi took refuge in it, the largest fish in the lake, as big as a man and impossible to catch. A little further on, by a short tunnel, stands the Ponte del Diavolo, perhaps the only structure of the historic road to survive intact; legend makes it a place of witchcraft rites.

At Bagnana the Cantieri Molinari, builders of lake boats, have set up a historical museum of boating. At Casate, on a square with a view, a cart recovered from the water recalls the lime kiln that worked from the nineteenth century to the 1950s, whose chimney still stands. The Punta della Cavagnola also has a Risorgimento story: in 1821 one Bonelli ran a centre of Carbonari activity there, with a vinegar distillery as cover.

The Strada Regia, the old mule track between Como and Bellagio, runs right through the comune. From Nesso to the centre of Lezzeno it is about seven kilometres, past old terraces and through woods, and the last stretch passes through the medieval cores of the hamlets. From the centre another four and a half kilometres lead to the Ponte del Diavolo, on the stretch below the Sassi Grosgalli.

From Calvasino the steps of the Way of the Cross climb to the church of the Santissima Trinità, at Casacca. The fourteen little chapels along the steps were frescoed in 1908, and inside the church, on the end wall, is a painting thought to date from the sixteenth century. At the foot of the mountain, at Morbia, stands the small church of the Madonna dei Ceppi, with a cross vault and a marble statue of the Madonna and Child, perhaps from the fifteenth century.