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Stories from the lake

Lake timeline

Two thousand years of the lake in order of date: from the Roman road along the western shore to the first steamboat, from the fall of the Isola Comacina to the Olginate dam. Each date leads to the story that tells it and to the place where it happened.

Dates
82
Stories
27
Periods
6
Como harbour with the jetty and moored boats, the cathedral dome on the right and the Brunate hill behind the town.
Photochrom Print Collection · Public domain

Only the dates from the story ‘The fall of the Isola Comacina'All dates

4dates

Middle Ages

6th century to 1449 · 3 dates

  1. Sant'Eufemia on the Isola Comacina

    Bishop Litigerius founds the canonry of Sant'Eufemia on the island, a basilica with a nave and two aisles, more than forty metres long. The walled island is the centre of the pieve, the parish district that gathers the churches of the western shore between the Camoggia valley and the Perlana stream.

    Place: Isola ComacinaStory: The fall of the Isola Comacina

  2. 1118–1127

    The Ten Years' War between Como and Milan

    The Isola Comacina and the lake's parish districts side with Milan against Como, and the lake becomes a battlefield. In 1124 the people of Como occupy and burn the island, but Milan wins the war: in August 1127 Como is taken and has to accept the demolition of the town, its churches excepted.

    Place: Isola ComacinaStory: The fall of the Isola Comacina

  3. Como razes the Isola Comacina

    Strong again with Frederick Barbarossa on its side, Como destroys the island down to its foundations and scatters its stones in the lake so that it cannot be rebuilt. The islanders flee to Varenna, where the quarter that takes them in is called Insula nova, the new island; in 1175 a decree of Barbarossa confirms the ban on rebuilding.

    Place: Isola ComacinaStory: The fall of the Isola Comacina

    Ruins on the Isola Comacina on a hazy summer day: in the foreground low walls of stacked flat stones, slabs and stones scattered on the ground among the grass; on the right a tree with a leaning trunk and a slope of dry grass, on the left trees and bushes; beyond, the pale blue lake and the steep wooded mountain of the opposite shore, with a village strung along the water at its foot, and in the distance another peak in the haze.

Twentieth century

1900–1999 · 1 date

  1. Excavations uncover Sant'Eufemia

    Ugo Monneret de Villard begins digging on the Isola Comacina and finds, under five metres of rubble and earth, the basilica of Sant'Eufemia, until then unknown. Its destruction in 1169 had spared it the alterations of the centuries that followed.

    Place: Isola ComacinaStory: The fall of the Isola Comacina

    The apse of the church of Santi Faustino e Giovita on the Isola Comacina, on a spring day: a curved wall of irregular pale stones, a few blocks jutting out, under a modern wooden roof that shelters it; on the left a wall with small blind arches and, at the foot of the apse, a small rectangular window; in the foreground a large agave with grey-green leaves, round it a sloping meadow of grass and rocks and trees in new leaf against the blue sky.