Cerano d'Intelvi

The church on the summit of Monte San Zeno was born of a vow. A group of Antelami masters was coming home from Verona, where they were working on the rebuilding of the basilica of San Zeno after the earthquake of 1117, when a storm caught them on the lake: they promised a church, and they built it up there, on the ruins of a Celtic hillfort. It was consecrated in 1215 by Guglielmo Della Torre, on the stone altar that is still inside. In the middle of the 20th century lightning brought down its bell tower and part of the roof, and for years it stayed a ruin; a committee rebuilt it from 1990, in 2000 it returned to worship, and on 22 August 2015 the bishop of Como reconsecrated it: eight hundred years after the first time.

The comune's arms tell the rest. There is the tower called Teodolinda's, which became the bell tower of the parish church of San Tommaso, and for the queen the iron crown kept in the cathedral of Monza; there are ears of wheat for Ceres, the goddess of harvests from whom the village's name is derived; the green field is the Intelvi valley with its high pastures, and the three stars are Giuslino, Veglio and Cerano. At Veglio, hidden behind the first chapel on the right, survives the 12th-century Romanesque apse with the oldest frescoes in the valley, 14th-century scenes of the Passion. In 1647 the comune redeemed itself from enfeoffment, and it was still paying that redemption, every fifteen years, in 1751.