Cantù

Cantù has two names and both are Celtic: Canturium from the Canturigi, the people Strabo places in Insubria, and Galliano — the oldest nucleus — from the Gallianates. The Roman road between Milan and Como ran over the hill of Galliano, and in one hamlet an inscription turned up that looks like the base of a statue to Pliny the Younger, who had an estate here reaching to the Lambro. The basilica of Galliano stands on a Roman temple: it was reconsecrated in 1007 by Ariberto da Intimiano, future archbishop of Milan and a son of this land, and the frescoes he left there are among the oldest in Lombardy.

Then Cantù made war on Como, and won it: after an ambush in the marshes of the Acquanegra it called Milan in, and on 27 August 1127 Como was sacked and destroyed. In 1324 the Grassi brothers declared it independent of Milan and ringed it with walls and thirty-five towers; the Porta Ferraia survives, named for the workshops where nails were beaten. The bobbin lace, they say, was brought here by a Burgundian nun, the first prioress of the Benedictine convent. From the nineteenth century it is furniture that makes the town's name, with Cantù cabinetmakers working alongside the great architects of the twentieth century. And then there is basketball: Pallacanestro Cantù won two European Cups in the eighties, a feat for a city ten times its size.