Skip to content

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 two Plinys of Lake Como'All dates

3dates

Antiquity

To the 5th century · 1 date

  1. AD 61 or 62

    Pliny the Younger is born

    The nephew of Pliny the Elder, who later adopts him, is born at Novum Comum, ancient Como. In his letters he describes the spring that rises and falls several times a day, the one at the Pliniana, and two villas of his on the shore of the Lario, which he calls Tragedy and Comedy.

    Place: ComoStory: The two Plinys of Lake Como

Renaissance and foreign rule

1450–1699 · 2 dates

  1. By 1498

    The two Plinys on the cathedral façade

    The brothers Giacomo and Tommaso Rodari complete the two aedicules on either side of the main doorway: Pliny the Elder sits on the left, Pliny the Younger on the right. In 1578, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, the statues survive an attempt to remove them.

    Place: Como CathedralStory: The two Plinys of Lake Como

    The aedicule of Pliny the Elder on the front of Como cathedral, protected by a glass case: the marble statue seated in a niche between two carved columns, a book on his knee; below, two reliefs between small caryatids, a garland held by putti and a stone tablet with a Latin inscription; around it, the grey marble blocks of the façade.

  2. A villa around the Pliniana spring

    Count Giovanni Anguissola, governor of Como, buys the land at Torno where the spring described by Pliny the Younger rises, and builds the villa there in three years. In the loggia two inscribed slabs carry Pliny's letter, in Latin and in Italian.

    Place: Villa Pliniana, TornoStory: The two Plinys of Lake Como

    The yellow villa on the shore below the rock face, with the white waterfall coming down through the greenery behind it.