Merone

The old parish church was called San Giacomo della Ferrera, but people called it San Giacomo in isola, Saint James on the island, because the Lambro and the lake of Pusiano overflowed so often that they left it surrounded by water. This is the right place for such a name: at Pontenuovo the Lambro gathers the outflows of the lakes of Pusiano and Alserio plus the ditches of the whole Erba plain, and at that point it stops behaving like a torrent and becomes a real river — so real that here they call it the Lambrone.

Four thousand one hundred and fifty-five inhabitants in the province of Como, on the hills that close the Erba plain to the south. In 1928 the cement factory opened that everyone calls the Cementeria di Merone, and to bring it marl and limestone a cableway six kilometres long was built as far as a quarry at Pusiano: it crossed the landscape for ninety years and was dismantled in 2018. The exhausted marl quarries filled with water and became the lakelets of the Baggero oasis. In 1285 the Torriani of Como burned the castle that stood here, and which is still drawn on the municipal arms.