Lipomo

The name probably comes from "Leponium", which the poem of the Anonimo Cumano on the ten-year war between Como and Milan gives as "Lepomum" and "Leppomum", in all likelihood a copying error; behind it would stand "Laeponius", commander of a Como outpost said to have been granted a villa or an estate here. Two other readings circulate, one Greek, for the uneven, terraced ground, one French, "lieu-pommes", the place of apples. Prehistoric, instead, would be the carvings on two mica-schist boulders on the flanks of Monte Croce, among them five ritual cup marks that seem to echo the constellation of Cygnus.

The coat of arms tells the rest: on red, the cross with the word LIBERTAS, the emblem of Como; below, a tower banded red and silver with Guelph merlons, on a green hill crossed by a blue river. The tower is that of the de Herra, who from the late seventeenth century owned much of the village; the river is the Valbasca, where traces of the earliest settlements came to light. In 1656, like every centre of the pieve of Zezio, Lipomo bought its way out of feudal subjection, paying a levy reckoned on the number of families.