Carlazzo has had official arms only since the twelfth of February 2026, when the presidential decree arrived. Until then the municipality used one of its own devising, and it was worth looking at: there was a four-pointed compass rose, one point for each part of the village, three oak leaves tied by a red ribbon bearing the date MCMXXVIII, and in the background a landscape of mountains with two sheets of water on the right, the lake of Piano and the lake of Lugano. It was, in practice, a map put inside a shield.
That 1928 is the year Carlazzo annexed Gottro and Piano Porlezza, repeating an operation already carried out by Napoleon and later cancelled by the Austrians; in 1861 the municipality had for a time been called Carlazzo Valsolda. The real name comes from the medieval Latin castellaceum, from castrum, with the s turned into r: this is confirmed by the hamlet of Castello, where there really are the remains of a fortification, and by the surname Castelli, very common here. The legend deriving it from a man named Carlo, the source warns, has no linguistic foundation whatever. Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-two inhabitants.
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Near Carlazzo
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