Pianello del Lario

The churches of Pianello were paid for by those who had left. The church of Sant'Anna was built between 1636 and 1652 at the urging of some Pianello people who had emigrated to Genoa and Milan, and the church of the Madonna della Neve was enlarged at the start of the eighteenth century with the contribution of others who had gone to Genoa and the Veneto: for centuries this village on the lake was kept going partly with money sent from outside. In 1807 a Napoleonic decree annexed to it the suppressed municipalities of Cremia and Musso, and the population jumped from a little over seven hundred inhabitants to nearly eighteen hundred; with the Restoration everything went back as before. The present name arrived with a royal decree of 8 February 1863.

From 1881 to 1890 the parish priest was don Luigi Guanella, who founded an institute for the elderly here, taking up the work of his predecessor, who had started a shelter that also took in orphans and the sick; in the village one can visit the house where Chiara Bosatta was born, today a small museum. The other memory is industrial: the Erba silk mill, built in the mid-nineteenth century when silkworms were reared here, has housed since 1982 the Museo della Barca Lariana, the museum of the lake's boats. And the mulberry trees on the municipal coat of arms are there to recall those very silkworms.