Villa Guardia is a comune drawn up on paper: in 1928, to cut administrative costs, a royal decree merged Maccio and Civello, two villages that had themselves absorbed Brusata, Macciasca and Brugo in the eighteenth century and had already been joined under Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy, before the Restoration undid it all. The name came from neither: La Guardia was a stretch of both, grown along the road between Como and Varese, and the town hall was placed on the climb leading to it. The Varesina still separates Maccio to the north from Civello to the south, and the two parishes, recorded since the late fifteenth century, stayed apart.
The arms tell the same story: two crenellated towers for the original nuclei, joined by a curtain wall, and on the wall a sentinel in full armour, a canting charge for the place that named the comune. In his left hand a golden key, a metaphor for autonomy; in his right a staff with a patriarchal cross and a banner, for the two historic parishes. The field colours recall those of Como. In the old centre of Civello stands the Torre Rusca, from a castle raised in 1260 by Lotterio Rusca.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 26 September
On 26 September the parish of Civello, in the municipality of Villa Guardia, celebrates Saints Cosmas and Damian; the parish of Maccio instead has Our Lady of the Assumption as patron, on 15 August.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Villa Guardia, but an easy day trip away.
