Portrait·2 min
Stories from the lake
Stories of the lake: its trades, winds, cooking, architecture and life out of season.
6stories
Feature·2 min
Palazzo Terragni, rationalism beside the cathedral
In 1936 Giuseppe Terragni completed the Casa del Fascio in Como, now Palazzo Terragni: a rationalist building in white marble fifty metres from the apse of the cathedral.
Story·8 min
The Comacine masters
A Lombard law of 643 names the magistri commacini, and what the word means is still uncertain. On the lake stand the Romanesque churches that tradition credits to them, although for almost none of them is the builder's name known.
Story·8 min
The monks' lake
Benedictines on the mountain above Civate, in the Val Perlana and in Como, Cluniacs at Piona, Cistercians at Acquafredda and nuns at Varenna: for more than a thousand years the lake had its monasteries, and nearly all of them were given in commendam, fell into ruin or became villas. Only one has monks again.
Story·7 min
The stone of the lake
The white marble of Musso, the grey stone of Moltrasio, the black of Varenna and Olcio: the lake gave its stone to its churches and to Como Cathedral, and carried it over the water aboard the comballi. Where it was quarried, where it can still be seen and how it travelled.
Story·8 min
The fall of the Isola Comacina
For ten years the Isola Comacina fought alongside Milan against Como. In 1169 the people of Como, strong again under Barbarossa, razed it and threw its stones into the lake; its people fled to Varenna. A legend of a curse is associated with its destruction. The war, the destruction and what excavation has found beneath the ruins.
Story·3 min
The century of the grand hotels
From the first inns of the 1820s to the grand hotels of 1873 and 1910: how Lake Como filled with hotels, and what remains of each.
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