Bizzarone

The village's name is the name of a wind. Bisarono, as it was written in the Middle Ages, means in Celtic the place where the bisa blows, that is the north wind, and that is why there is a compass rose in the coat of arms. Beside the rose there is a horse, and that too says something: Bizzarone stood on the Strada Cavallina, the road that linked the State of Milan to the Mendrisiotto and that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was travelled by merchants, horse drivers and smugglers. That a border ran through here is still recalled by a boundary stone in the locality of Santa Margherita, carved «Stato di Milano Comune di Bizzarone 1784».

The border is still there, and it is the one with Switzerland: the comune has a customs post and looks onto the territories of Mendrisio, Novazzano and Stabio. The Statutes of Como of 1335 already listed the «comune de Bisarono» among those of the pieve of Uggiate, and it was into Uggiate that Napoleon had it incorporated when he decided to merge the smaller comuni; the Austrians, reactivating the comuni of the province of Como, repealed the merger and Bizzarone existed again. The oldest thing in the village is a tombstone with an inscription of the sixth century, found in 1890 while it was serving as the balustrade of a well.