Garzeno

Garzeno has 852 inhabitants and is the last comune of the Valle Albano, on the road that for centuries linked the Val Mesolcina to the upper Lake Como over the San Jorio pass. It is that road that gives the village a history: in 1220 Frederick II granted in fief the so-called Monte di Dongo, and Garzeno with it, to the Sacco, who were the lords of the Mesolcina on the other side of the pass. And the road had to be kept up: the Statutes of Como of 1335 list Garzeno among the communities responsible for the Mezzola road, and specify its share, because the men of Garzeno had to build sixteen arches, picking up where the work of the men of Stazzona left off and going down towards the lake.

Then there are two things about the way people built up here. The hamlet of Catasco stands on the deposits of a gigantic landslide that has still not entirely settled. And scattered across the territory are the masun, the local mountain huts, with very steeply pitched roofs thatched in rye straw, put up to a scheme that comes down from the Middle Ages. Above the pass stands the little church of San Jorio, which owes its name to the man tradition says built it, a hermit; and an old customs-guard barracks, in service from 1870 to 1976, is now a mountain refuge.