Luisago

In the Como country, to describe work that never ends and that nobody pays for, people say working for the church of Portichetto. The saying was born here. From 1860 the inhabitants of the hamlet set about building themselves a bigger church over the old chapel, free of charge and in their spare time; a first version was blessed only in 1892, and the work went on for years more. After the war they decided to make it bigger still: by 1951 they had already raised all the pillars, then a better site became free in the centre and they began again there. The reinforced-concrete pillars stayed where they were, and can still be seen.

The new church, octagonal in plan, was inaugurated in 1959, and at that point the proverb came round one last time. The hamlet's name comes from the portico of the Porteghetto inn, documented from the eighteenth century; before that it was called Bricola. Luisago is an almost flat municipality — thirteen metres of difference between its highest and lowest points — and the Lakes motorway crosses it without having any exit. Two thousand six hundred and eighty-six inhabitants in the province of Como.