Stazzona

Above the present village lies Vergosio, a group of houses abandoned during the plague of 1630, where traces of frescoes can still be seen on the walls. The community of Vergosio had a church of its own, San Gottardo, of the fifteen hundreds, with a frescoed front — and before that front there is a porch which was paid for by the emigrants of Stazzona in London. Leaving, here, is an old thing: over the centuries, and particularly in the seventeen hundreds, people went from this village to Bologna and to Palermo.

Stazzona takes its name from a posting station that stood on the mule track climbing from Dongo to the pass of San Jorio; near that pass, in 1915, a spearhead was found, probably Roman. The oldest records of the place are of the thirteenth century, and the annexes to the statutes of Como of 1335 list it among the communities of the pieve of Dongo. In the sixteenth century the notaries write it in several different ways, and on the map of the Duchy of Milan painted in the Gallery of Maps of the Vatican palaces the village appears under a name all of its own: Sdonne. Twice it has been joined to a neighbour and twice it has come back: a Napoleonic decree of 1807 annexed it to Consiglio di Rumo, and the Restoration cancelled the decision; and from 1928 to 1954 it formed a single comune with Germasino. The parish church of San Giuliano was consecrated in 1533, enlarging an older church that is documented as early as 1337.