Discover the history of Colico, Lake Como
Colico is the last village on the eastern shore of Lake Como, it is a center of transit toward Valtellina, Val Chiavenna, and the alpine passes of Spluga and Maloja. It rises at the foot of Mount Legnone, which with its 2609 meters is the highest mountain of the Larian Fore-Alps Mountains.
Because of its strategic position at the foot of the Alps and close to the many mountain passes toward Central Europe, Colico had always been contended by the different tribes either coming from South (Ligurian, Romans, Etruscans), or peoples coming from Beyond the Alps. For sure, this area had been inhabited since prehistory with some kind of residential settlements till the advent of Celtic populations among who emerged the dominant tribe of the Insubres, who later mingled with the Gaul tribes coming from central- northern Europe.
The Roman period
The roman conquest of the Larian zone by Marco Claudio Marcello happened in the year 197 B.C. Nevertheless, it is not possible to establish if among the 28 castles he conquered there was some belonging to the Upper lake Como or Valtellina. Anyway, if the military encampment Consul Q. Marcio raised to combat the Stone in 117 B.C. was the so called Pons Marcii at Pian di Spagna, it would be possible to think that those lands were already under the roman rule at that time.
For sure, the Romans feared barbarian invasions more from north than from south and, consequently, all the Alpine passes were fortified because they represented a bastion of safety which obstructed the eventual invaders to come down from the Alps. Maybe that was the reason why starting from their settlement on the Upper Larius Lands they were urged to build the mysterious Olonio Tower in the nowadays called Plan of Spain.
In the 16™ B.C. the Alpine populations who were not yet fully Romanized, rebelled against Rome also drugging with them the Rhaets and the Vandals; two ethnic groups that lived in a wide territory that from the Graubünden stretched through Bavaria and reached the river Danube. Emperor August sent there his two sons Drusus and Tiber to put down the rebellion, which happened the following year, the 15™ B.C. And indeed, it was during that war mission at the beginning of the whole transalpine routes of the central section of the Alps, including Via Regina.
The decline of the Roman Empire allowed the invasion of the tribes coming from Beyond the Alps, as the Franks, a barbarian people who had been pressing at the Italian border for along time. They succeeded in settling on the Upper and Medium Larius and it is very likely that Theodeberth and Sigeberth, two kings of that people, were able to put a temporarily domain on these lands, thus enforcing the dualism that had always existed, between the town of Como and its Lake and which in the following years was the cause of bloody and devastating wars.
The longobars
It was only at the beginning of the 535 A.C., when the Larian territory started to split as consequence of the Greek-Goth war fought for on the lake at Isola Comacina. It was helped by the King of the Goths Vitigy who gave the Swiss Rhaetia to the Franks in order to have their support against the Byzantines who had occupied Italy.
In 569 A.C. came on the scene the Longbards; a people native from the Scandinavian cold lands who had migrated to Hungary where they settled for less than two hundred years, till when the Huns, a fierce and bloodthirsty people of plunderers coming from the Eastern steppes, forced them to leave. The Longbards migrated to the west and when at long last they reached the Italian shores, they penetrated the Po valet and swarmed throughour the fertile lands of Lombardy where they settled.
In the meanwhile, at Como was elected Bishop the Germanic Agrippino. Anyway, the northern Larian zones were not yet affected by the effects of the new Longbard domination because they enjoyed of a kind of neutral agreement between the Franks and the Longbards, which consented them to be somehow independent.
That notwithstanding, this privilege did not last long because in 616 A.C. the Longbard reached the Upper Larius area with the schismatic Bishop Agrippino who had the oratory titled to the Martyr Saint Giustina built at Piona, of which are still visible the remains of the apse and the inscription he himself dictated.
Bishop Agrippino had adhered to the schism of the Three Chapters by dethatching the Diocese of Como from the Church of Milan to join it to the schismatic Longbard one of Aquileia, still notwithstanding they were under the Longbard rule, the Upper Larius lands still enjoyed a some kind of autonomy.
In the years following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, another people who had been longing to possess the lands south of the Alps, settled on the Upper Larius area: they were the Swabians who, starting from their King Henry 2nd, established the County of Chiavenna by occupying some border lands.
The Sforza dynasty
During the 10th and 11th century, also the Larius lands participated to the castrensian phenomena which characterized the whole Middle Ages. At Olonio the Parish Castle that all Como and Valtellina historians recognize to be the most ancient and important of the whole Larian zone, owed its existence to its strategic importance being set at the confluence of three regions: the Larian, the Valtellina and the Spluga Valley.
Anyway, the Castle of Olonio was destroyed in 1532, and it had never been rebuilt.
At the beginning December 1493, the town of Como hosted a sumptuous rejoicing in honour of Bianca Maria Sforza who, after having married by proxy Emperor Maximilian 1st, was on her way to Germany to join her husband. Among the very important people there were: the future Duke of Milan Ludwig the Moore, uncle of the bride; the Savoy family, future kings of Italy, related to the bride from part of her mother, Bona of Savoy; the Este Dukes of Ferrara; the Aragon of Naples; and last also Leonardo da Vinci who at that time (and for 15 years) was part of the court of the Sforza of Milan.
December the 6th, Bianca Maria Sforza, together with a fleet of boats coming from all over the lake, left Como and set sail toward the north and when they reached the port of Molata, at the foot of Chiavenna, many of the bride’s escort remained at Upper Larius, while the Sforza procession proceeded toward Germany, along the antique roman route Via Regina.
Unfortunately, the whole Upper Larius area had to be abandoned because the once fertile lands, had little by little turned onto a swamp either because of the progressive rise of the lake waters, or because of some unusual flood of the river Adda. In less than two hundred years, those fertile lands had turned into submerged marchland and the debris formed a wide plain separating Lake Como from Lake Mezzola.
