Colonno

The name comes perhaps from Colonus, and the founding of the village is traced to the settlers Julius Caesar wanted on the western shore of the Lario, farming families from Magna Graecia who brought the olive and the vine: it is that story the arms recall with a Roman dagger, beneath which four wavy bands make the water of the lake. In 1905, while the main road was being remade, four tombs came to light between Colonno and Sala. One was untouched, and in it lay a young fisherman, buried with a soapstone vase, a bronze net needle and a coin of Diocletian.

Fish was also an obligation. The statutes of Como of 1240 bound Colonno and Sala to supply the city market with twenty pounds of fish every Tuesday and forty every Saturday. For the rest the village lived on farm produce, on fishing and on the clay dug from the Pessetta torrent, good against rheumatism: it was the women of Colonno who carried it to Como and to Milan. On 13 December 1925 the comune grew by taking the hamlet of San Bartolomeo from Sala Comacina; then, from 20 September 1928 to 20 April 1950, it ceased to exist, absorbed with Sala Comacina and Ossuccio into the new comune of Isola Comacina.