Rovello Porro

Until 1926 the town was simply Rovello: that year it asked for and won the addition of General Carlo Porro's name, his family having inherited the fief from the Pagani, the Milanese marquesses who held it. The older name is still argued over: the likelier reading traces it to roa, said to mean stony ground, a rarer one to the Celtic rose, valley, and vel, fortification. It is the minority version that ended up on the coat of arms, with its silver crenellated tower; the Moor's head above it comes from the Pagani blazon and recalls the family's battles against the Saracens, while the blue field stands for the Lura.

Some forty graves found between Via Manzoni and Via Carducci at the end of the seventies, with mirrors, lamps and coins, show it was settled in Roman times. Napoleon later moved Rovello from the province of Milan to that of Como, and a decree of 1807 attached it to Rovellasca, which the Restoration undid; in 1928 the two villages became one comune again, seated in Rovellasca and named Rovi Porro, and in 1939 they split apart.