In the autumn of 1944 Menaggio housed the anti-rebel centre of the sixth company of the eleventh Black Brigade, commanded by Emilio Castelli, deputy federal secretary of Como. Torture and killing passed through that centre: nineteen partisans lost their lives there, among them Enrico Caronti known as Romolo, murdered on the twenty-third of December 1944. On the twenty-sixth of April 1945 the same centre received Benito Mussolini in flight towards the border: the next day he would be captured a little further north, at Dongo.
Beneath that recent history lies a very long one. The via Regina passed through here, the Roman road that climbed from the river port of Cremona to Chiavenna, and in the Como statutes of 1335 Menaggio is the head of the pieve charged with maintaining a stretch of it. In the sixteenth century the Grisons put the village to fire and sword in 1516 and in 1521, and with the attack of 1523 they destroyed the castle, which had four towers, a ditch and two lines of walls. Much later came the villas and the grand hotels of the Belle Époque. Three thousand one hundred and eighty-two inhabitants on the western shore of Lake Como.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 26 December; the International Guitar Festival since 2007 in late August
Menaggio celebrates Saint Stephen on 26 December. Since 2007, every year in late August, the International Guitar Festival is held, organized by the Pro Loco.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Menaggio, but an easy day trip away.
