Zelbio

Zelbio may come from the Celtic Zerbium, the grassy place, and appears with its present name in a document of 1275. In the statutes of Como it is already a borgo, and with a curious duty: although it stood on the opposite shore, it had to contribute to the upkeep of a stretch of the via Regina, the lakeside road. In the Middle Ages it became part of the fief of Nesso, and in 1497 Ludovico il Moro gave it to his mistress Lucrezia Crivelli.

The plague of 1630 all but wiped the village out: only the Bellieni, Stoppani and Tacchi families came through it, the sources say. Zelbio lost its independence twice and twice took it back, the last time in 1948, when it separated from Veleso after twenty years as a single municipality. In 1952 an American colonel, James Hugh Angleton, had a rest home built here at the parish priest's invitation for the employees of a cash-register factory: that building is now the hotel which, together with the works at Pian del Tivano, keeps the village going.