Colico

The town of Colico is the last we come across on the east coast of the Lecco branch of Lake Como. It is immersed in a grand landscape of mountains dominated to the east by the Legnone, to the north by the Chiavenna peaks amongst which Sasso Manduino, and to the west by the mountain tops of the Alto Lario.

It is an important tourist locality for both holidays and stop-overs: it is in fact situated between the converging point of the roads coming from Lecco, Chiavenna and Sondrio - in other words from the plains and from the Alpine passes coming from Switzerland and Austria.

It is a key point for commerce between north and south. Colico was already inhabited during the Roman and pre-Roman era, it was fortified during the municipal period, devastated by the passing through of foreign troops who were heading for Milan, by epidemics and by the repeated floods of the Adda river. In the 1400s and the 1500s it became the manor of names such as the Visconti, the Sanseverino, the Sforza, the Caldarini, the Pusterla, the Quadrio and the Alberti families. At the end of the 1600s the surrounding territory was an uninhabited and foul-smelling swamp.