Alserio

The name of Alserio comes from water: from the ecclesiastical Latin Alserium, in which serium means canal, and from the dialect sér, brook. The whole village bears this out. There is the lake that carries its name, inside the regional park of the Lambro valley; there were seven mills, recalled today by the wheel on the coat of arms; and between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Alserio was among the communities obliged to supply the Milan market with fish during Lent, a lakeside village that appears in the city's records because of its catch.

Ice was also cut from the lake, and the land above the shore belonged to the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan, which used it precisely to store that ice; it passed to the Imbonati family in 1654 and was sold in 1844 to baron Giuseppe Patroni, who had the villa built that still crowns the hill of Tassera. In that same spot, in August 1160, the Milanese and their allies fought the troops of Frederick Barbarossa in the battle of Carcano. The coat of arms also carries silver billets: they recall the exemption from taxes granted by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1380.