Inverigo

Inverigo lies in the Brianza of Como, along the Lambro, and grew in concentric rings around the houses of the lords of its hamlets. The name joins the preposition in to an old Celtic toponym, wari-ik-o, meaning place to the east: a document of 996 records the spot as Euvuirico. A second reading ties it to water instead, from the form Aiguerigium attested in the twelfth century, where the root aigue- would be Celtic for water.

From the village runs the two-kilometre avenue of cypresses, planted in stages by the Crivelli between the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century to hold the Giant's Staircase, their villa, the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Noce and the Navello fowling tower in one telescopic vista. The staircase is named after a huge marble figure, by now too damaged for its features to be read: a cyclops perhaps, or Hercules. Along the oldest stretch the apse of the old Romanesque church of San Silvestro is still visible, built by Leopoldo Pollack into the retaining wall of a villa terrace. The sanctuary's bell tower is far older than the church it serves: a square fifteenth-century brick tower, probably one of a chain of signal towers linking Lecco, Erba, Cantù and Mariano.