Lurano

The sanctuary of Lurano is called the Madonna of the Quails, and the name comes from a legend. During a hunt the Suardi and the Agliardi, two powerful families, were quarrelling over a quail just killed; in the middle of the argument the bird took wing again through the intercession of Mary, and the contenders made peace. The frescoed sanctuary dates from around 1400 and has reopened after a long restoration. The village, out in the Bergamo plain, is far older: under the Romans a permanent camp stood here at the crossing of two roads, the main one linking Milan to Aquileia — the same road that centuries later would bring the raids from the north-east.

The first written mention is from the year 800, when these lands passed under the bishop of Cremona. In the thirteenth century the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines led to the building of the Secco-Suardo castle, today a villa and a store for farm tools: in its chapel is kept the memorial stone of Alberico Suardo, podestà in the fourteenth century, brought here from the old church of Santo Stefano that the Campione masters had made in 1309. In 1428 the district passed to Venice, which cleared land, dug canals and traced the fosso bergamasco, the border with the Duchy of Milan that skirts Lurano to the south. A plaque in the town hall recalls, lastly, the stop Victor Emmanuel II made in the village before the battle of San Martino in 1859.