Cremia

The origin of the name is uncertain: it may come from a stream that once bore it, or from the Latin cremium, the fine dry wood used to start a fire. In late Roman times the territory was crossed by the Via Regia, which linked Cremona to Chiavenna, and its line is said to be still readable in the arrangement of the upper hamlets. Roads, however, cost money: the annexes to the statutes of Como of 1335 assign to Cremia the upkeep of a stretch of the Mezzola road, measured precisely at a hundred and thirty braccia.

The two churches of the municipality were furnished by those who had left. In the church of San Vito a plaque of 1568 records the gifts of villagers who had emigrated to Genoa in the sixteenth century; in San Michele, at Vignola, the high altar holds a painting by Paolo Caliari, donated by a man from Cremia who had settled in Vicenza. As for the coat of arms, the municipality has never officially adopted one: in practice it uses a red shield with a silver spindle, proposed but not approved by the council on the seventh of July 1949, in memory of the village's wool-spinning mills. Of the old mill the chimney still stands.