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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

16dates

Antiquity

To the 5th century · 2 dates

  1. 1st century

    The Roman road along the western shore

    A Roman road links the river port of Cremona with Chiavenna by way of Milan and Como, running up the western shore of the lake towards Raetia, the province beyond the Alps. Its line is that of the Regina road, which remains a paved mule track for fifteen centuries.

    Place: ComoStory: The Regina, the road of the western shore

    Colonno from a drone, the Isola Comacina and the Tremezzina shore beyond, the Regina running between the houses and the water.

  2. 2nd or 3rd century

    The Romans use Musso marble

    The sixteen columns of San Lorenzo in Milan, about seven and a half metres tall and taken from Roman buildings of those centuries, are of white Musso marble. The main quarries were on the spur where the Medeghino's castle later stood.

    Place: MussoStory: The stone of the lake

Middle Ages

6th century to 1449 · 4 dates

  1. 643

    Rothari's Edict names the Comacine masters

    Two chapters of the law of the Lombard king Rothari deal with the magister commacinus and settle who must pay for the damage if a house built by a master collapses. The name most probably means builders and stonecutters from the Como area, but its meaning is not settled.

    Place: ComoStory: The Comacine masters

    The Isola Comacina from above: a tongue of wooded land in the blue lake, with meadows and a white building towards the point and a strip of gravel on the shore; behind, the far shore with houses along the water, and at the bottom roofs and green branches.

  2. 24 January 835

    Limonta passes to the monastery of Sant'Ambrogio

    By a charter of the Emperor Lothair, Limonta becomes a fief of the Milanese monastery of Sant'Ambrogio, which holds it until 1797. For centuries the oil of this stretch of the Lecco branch burns in the lamps on the tomb of Milan's patron saint.

    Place: Oliveto LarioStory: The olive coast

    Limonta from the lake: on the shore wall a yellow and brick villa with a pagoda-roofed tower, cedars and a copper beech; above, houses climb the slope among silvery olive trees, and higher up the woods cover the mountain.

  3. The comballo, the lake's cargo boat

    The comballo already appears in a document that forbids the boatmen of Lake Como to go into partnership with one another. Twenty to thirty metres long, flat-bottomed and with a single square sail, it carries Moltrasio stone, sand, lime and wood for the kilns.

    Place: ComoStory: The stone of the lake

  4. 1336–1338

    Azzone Visconti's bridge at Lecco

    Azzone Visconti, lord of Milan, has the bridge built over the Adda where the river leaves the lake. It has eight arches; the people of Como, convinced that its narrowing floods their town, obtain three more between 1354 and 1440.

    Place: Ponte Azzone ViscontiStory: When the lake comes into town

    The bridge and its arches over the water, the snow-capped mountains above Lecco behind.

Eighteenth century

1700–1799 · 1 date

  1. Late 18th century

    Silk leaves the home

    After three centuries as cottage work, with silkworms reared at home and thread spun in winter, silk processing moves into mills along the streams, which provide the power. In the nineteenth century Como becomes one of Europe's leading silk centres.

    Place: Silk MuseumStory: Como silk

    Hanks of silk yarn dyed in shades of blue, hanging on a wooden rod; spools of other colours behind.

Nineteenth century

1800–1899 · 6 dates

  1. The first steamboat

    The Lario, a wooden paddle steamer launched on 29 July from the Olmo beach at Borgo Vico, begins daily runs between Como and Domaso. A journey from Como to Colico, which under sail and oar could take a day or two, now takes a few hours and keeps to a timetable.

    Place: Villa OlmoStory: Two hundred years under steam

    The paddle steamer Concordia under way, black funnel and the villas of the shore behind.

  2. ‘The Betrothed' names the Lucia boats

    Alessandro Manzoni's novel is published for the first time. In it Lucia crosses the lake by night in a working boat with hoops for an awning, and from then on that boat is called a Lucia.

    Place: LeccoStory: The Lucie, the boats with hoops

    Lecco at dusk mirrored in still water, the bell tower of San Nicolò and the cliffs of Monte San Martino.

  3. The little railway from Menaggio to Porlezza

    The narrow-gauge railway linking Lake Como with Lake Lugano is inaugurated on 8 October and opened to the public on 17 November. To climb above Menaggio the train reverses in a manoeuvre called the regresso; the service ends in 1939.

    Place: MenaggioStory: When the railway reached the lake

    Menaggio seen from the Hôtel Victoria, as the printed caption says: in the foreground the tracks of the railway to Porlezza, then the village and the lake at sunset.

  4. The railway along the eastern shore

    With the section from Bellano to Colico, after the one from Lecco to Bellano in 1892, a complete rail service links Lecco with the Valtellina. As far as Colico the line has eighty-nine curves, eighteen viaducts and nineteen tunnels.

    Place: BellanoStory: When the railway reached the lake

    Varenna station on a sunny day: two white-and-green trains standing at the platform, lettered Trenord, and passengers getting off and walking along the platform with bags and hats; at the far end the tracks run into the tunnel, below a pale rock face and the woods.

  5. The Brunate funicular

    The funicular between Como and Brunate, designed by the engineer brothers Villoresi, opens to the public. Planned to run on water, by gravity, it works instead with a steam winch because there is not enough water; in 1911 it switches to electric motors.

    Place: Como–Brunate FunicularStory: When the railway reached the lake

    The red car of the Como–Brunate funicular climbing, the city below.

  6. 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 · 3 dates

  1. The first high-voltage three-phase railway

    The lines from Lecco to Colico and Chiavenna and from Colico to Sondrio switch to electric traction, with three-thousand-volt overhead lines fed by the power station at Morbegno. They are the first in the world to run trains on high-voltage three-phase alternating current.

    Place: ColicoStory: When the railway reached the lake

    The electric locomotive E.430.001 on display at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan: a black engine with sloping bonnets and the cab in the middle with its windows, lamps, the buffer beam and the bogie frames in red, and on top two red poles for collecting the current; in front, a panel headed “Locomotiva elettrica”; beside it a black steam locomotive, and around them the hall with its roof of glass and steel.

  2. The car ferry

    The first autochiatta, the car ferry, goes into service. Since then Bellagio, Varenna, Menaggio and Cadenabbia have been linked by the centre-lake crossings, the only way to take a car to the other shore without driving round the branch.

    Place: VarennaStory: Two hundred years under steam

    The car ferry Lario under way, cars and motorbikes on the loading deck and passengers on the stairs.

  3. The road reaches the Piani Resinelli

    A carriage road reaches the plateau below the Grignetta, the starting point of Lecco's climbers; until then the way up was a mule track. On the spires above the Resinelli, Riccardo Cassin and Mary Varale had opened the Via Mary on the Guglia Angelina in 1931.

    Place: Parco Valentino BelvedereStory: The red sweaters of the Grignetta

    The Campaniletto del Rifugio, one of the Grignetta's spires, at blue hour: a blade of grey limestone scored with cracks rises against the sky on the left, with a small marker on its top; on the right, far below, the lights of a town beside a stretch of water, more lights scattered across the plain and the dark outlines of mountains.