Medolago

Medolago probably means "in the middle of the lake": from the Latin medio-lacus, because the village stood at the centre of the ancient Lake Gerundo, drained in the Middle Ages. It is the name of a place that no longer exists, left behind on the people who lived there. There is another hypothesis too, Lombard: midjǭ-lagar, "the camp set in the middle". The first document naming Medolago is from the year 917, and it calls it a castrum. In the Middle Ages power lay with the Medolago Albani family, who took their name from the village and who still own the palace surrounded by its moat, the remains of the castle.

Being close to the stronghold of Trezzo sull'Adda came at a price: in 1377 Bernabò Visconti devastated the village and neighbouring Solza, and in 1509 the French army of Charles d'Amboise made a slaughter of the inhabitants, guilty of having resisted the invasion. With Venice, from 1428, calm returned. The most recent blow was administrative: in 1928 Medolago was merged with that same Solza into a new municipality with an invented name, Riviera d'Adda, with its seat in the other village; independence came back only in 1970. In the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta, of 1743, there is an organ built in 1859 by the firm Giudici e Compagno, with thirty-five stops in the Lombard manner.