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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 battery, the fire and the Tempio'All dates

5dates

Eighteenth century

1700–1799 · 1 date

  1. Alessandro Volta is born

    Volta is born in Como, in the house in Via Volta where he will die in 1827. As a young man he does his first experiments in Canon Gattoni's laboratory, in a tower of the town walls; in 1778 he takes the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia.

    Place: ComoStory: The battery, the fire and the Tempio

Nineteenth century

1800–1899 · 2 dates

  1. Volta announces the battery

    In a letter to Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society in London, Volta announces a new device: a column of discs of different metals, separated by pieces of card soaked in salt water. He had built it in Como at the end of 1799; from its shape it is called a pila, a pile.

    Place: Tempio VoltianoStory: The battery, the fire and the Tempio

    The Tempio Voltiano in Como on a clear day: four Corinthian columns carry the entablature inscribed “A·Volta” and a pediment with a medallion, two white statues stand in niches, winged figures sit at the corners of the roof and the dome rises behind; at the base an arch with a basin, in front a round flowerbed ringed with bollards and chains, on either side trees clipped into domes and two lamp posts, and on the right, beyond the trees, the lake and the mountains with a village.

  2. The Volta Exhibition burns

    A spark from two electric wires sets fire to the wooden pavilions of the exhibition built on the lakeshore for the centenary of the battery: they burn in less than an hour, with many of Volta's relics. Within a month the engineer Eugenio Linati rebuilds them, and the exhibition reopens on 20 August.

    Place: ComoStory: The battery, the fire and the Tempio

Twentieth century

1900–1999 · 2 dates

  1. The physicists' congress for the Volta centenary

    Sixty-one physicists meet in Como, Pavia and Rome, among them the young quantum physicists: Pauli, Heisenberg, Fermi, Dirac. At the congress Niels Bohr first sets out the principle of complementarity; the Como sessions are held in the science room of the Istituto Carducci, later called the Nobel room.

    Place: Istituto Carducci and the Nobel RoomStory: The battery, the fire and the Tempio

    The Istituto Carducci's facade on the avenue, its tall windows and early twentieth-century decoration behind the trees.

  2. The Tempio Voltiano opens

    The industrialist Francesco Somaini gives the city the Volta museum on the lakefront, designed by Federico Frigerio with an explicit nod to the Pantheon. A plinth more than two metres high protects it from floods; inside are original instruments of Volta's.

    Place: Tempio VoltianoStory: The battery, the fire and the Tempio

    The interior of the Tempio Voltiano seen from the gallery: a frieze of green marble runs round the rotunda with an inscription in gilded letters, “…Francesco Somaini offriva…”; below, grey marble columns with Corinthian capitals, the balcony with figured reliefs and medallions bearing dates, from 1790 to 1800; at the bottom the mosaic floor of coloured marbles, dark green display cases with instruments, a white bust on a pedestal of yellow marble hung with a wreath of leaves, and windows open onto greenery.