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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

13dates

Antiquity

To the 5th century · 1 date

  1. 5th century

    A baptistery on the Isola Comacina

    A hall for baptism, decorated with mosaics and frescoes, stands on the island. Its remains came to light in the twentieth-century excavations around the small church of San Giovanni.

    Place: Isola ComacinaStory: The Comacine masters

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. The first lands of the abbey of San Benedetto

    Rainaldus, Bishop of Como, climbs into the Val Perlana to settle a quarrel between the men of Isola and those of Lenno over the church of San Benedetto. He obtains a gift of land and grazing rights: it is the oldest document of the abbey.

    Place: San Benedetto in Val PerlanaStory: The monks' lake

    San Benedetto's facade and bell tower, among the meadows and woods of the Val Perlana.

  3. The Cistercians at Acquafredda

    Azzo, known as Pellegrino, gives the Cistercians of Morimondo land above Lenno for a monastery to keep the relics of Saints Agrippinus and Domenica, brought from the Isola Comacina. The name, ‘cold water', comes from a nearby spring; the church of Santa Maria dell'Uliveto is consecrated in 1193.

    Place: Acquafredda Abbey, LennoStory: The monks' lake

    The white bell tower and yellow church of the abbey on the hillside, among cypresses, with the lake and mountains behind.

Renaissance and foreign rule

1450–1699 · 1 date

  1. The convent at Varenna becomes a house

    Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, suppresses the Cistercian convent at Varenna, where too few nuns remain. In 1569 Paolo Mornico buys it and makes it a house: this is the origin of Villa Monastero.

    Place: Villa MonasteroStory: The monks' lake

    Villa Monastero from the balustrade over the lake, among palms and cypresses, the point of Varenna beyond.

Nineteenth century

1800–1899 · 7 dates

  1. Liszt at Bellagio

    Franz Liszt arrives with Marie d'Agoult and stays at the Genazzini hotel. On the lake he writes the twelve Grandes études for piano; on Christmas Eve, at the Albergo dell'Angelo in Como, his daughter Cosima is born, who will marry Wagner.

    Place: Palazzo GenazziniStory: The musicians' lake

    The white marble group of Dante and Beatrice: Dante, crowned with laurel, holds her hand; Beatrice, standing on a globe among clouds, raises her arm upwards. Below, the arcaded pedestal with carved verses, in front of a dark hedge with rhododendron flowers.

  2. The lake in ‘The Charterhouse of Parma'

    Stendhal's novel is published. Fabrice del Dongo grows up in the family castle at Grianta, on the western shore opposite Bellagio; the second chapter shows Villa Melzi and the headland that divides the two branches, the voluptuous branch of Como and the stern branch of Lecco.

    Place: GrianteStory: The writers' lake

  3. The lake in two lithographs from daguerreotypes

    A year after the daguerreotype was presented in Paris, the lake is already among the subjects of the first photographers. Two lithographs copied from daguerreotypes show Bellagio from the lake, signed Falkeisen, and Villa Pliniana, signed Louis Cherbuin.

    Place: BellagioStory: The lake's first photographers

    An 1840 lithograph made from a daguerreotype: Bellagio seen from the lake, with houses on the shore, the bell tower and a rowing boat in the foreground.

  4. Flaubert at Villa Sommariva

    Gustave Flaubert visits the villa at Tremezzo that will later be called Carlotta. He goes back several times to look at the Cupid and Psyche, which he believes to be by Canova, and on his last visit kisses the statue; the group is attributed to Adamo Tadolini, Canova's pupil.

    Place: Villa CarlottaStory: The writers' lake

    The white marble group of Cupid and Psyche seen close up, in a dimly lit room: Cupid, one wing raised high and the other lower, bends over Psyche, holding her head and breast in his hands; she leans back, lifting her arms round his head of thick curls; light from above picks out the arms and shoulders; behind, tall shuttered windows, a patterned glazed window and a bust on a pedestal.

  5. The publisher Ricordi's villa at Cadenabbia

    Villa Margherita is built at Cadenabbia for the music publisher Ricordi, reportedly with the proceeds of Il trovatore. Giuseppe Verdi is often a guest, and Amilcare Ponchielli starts work there on I Lituani, staged at La Scala in 1874.

    Place: Villa Margherita Ricordi, CadenabbiaStory: The musicians' lake

    The yellow villa seen from the road: green shutters, the semicircular hall with its balcony, the name Margherita and the clock between two statues at the top, above the lawn and the balustrade.

  6. c. 1895

    The lake printed in colour

    A Zurich firm prints views of the lake by the photochrom process: Bellagio, the Tremezzina, Cadenabbia, Menaggio and Como. Each print starts from a black-and-white negative, and the colours noted by the photographer are transferred to a series of lithographic stones, one for each tint.

    Place: BellagioStory: The lake in colour, around 1895

    Bellagio from above in a late nineteenth-century photochrom: the lakefront with its tree-lined walks, the bell tower and the snowy Alps behind.

  7. 1896–1897

    Cinema comes to the lake

    The Lumière brothers, touring Italy to make the cinematograph known, film scenes of a boat race at Bellagio. The footage is kept at the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome.

    Place: BellagioStory: The lake on film

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.