Oltrona di San Mamette

Oltrona stands on a hill and for centuries had no water. Its land had only small streams, not enough for people or animals, and a marsh towards Appiano; water really arrived only with the aqueducts, brought from where there was some. The name, according to the local historian Francesco Ferrario, explains why people stayed all the same: it would be made of three pieces — ol, an Indo-European root for "beyond" or "great", trona from the Latin thronus or the Etruscan thruna, "fortress", and ona, a Ligurian word for "rounded hilltop" — that is, "great fortress on a rounded hilltop". A place chosen to see far, not to drink.

The Gerbo hill, levelled during building work, yielded a settlement of the Golasecca culture of the sixth or fifth century BC: stretches of paving made with river pebbles, dry-stone walls, fragments of pots and cups and — the finest thing — an oven for baking bread. The name appears for the first time in August 962, as "Altrona", in a deed of sale still kept today in the archive of San Fedele in Milan; in 1160 there was a fortress on the hill of San Mamette, one of the Milanese bulwarks against Frederick Barbarossa. Later the village long belonged to the Benedictines of San Simpliciano, so much so that in 1651 the peasants rebelled to be rid of them and pass under Spain: nothing came of it. "Di San Mamette" was added in 1863, so as not to be confused with Oltrona al Lago.