Cesana Brianza

In the ode La salubrità dell'aria, of 1759, Giuseppe Parini sings of the "blessed ground of my lovely Eupili" and of a fair village sheltered by the high ridge of the mountains: local tradition holds that this village is Cesana, which Parini could see from the window of his house at Bosisio. The municipality, which until 1863 was called simply Cesana and which in dialect is San Fermo, lies between the lakes of Pusiano and Annone, on the southern slope of Monte Cornizzolo. The name comes from Caesiana rura, the fields of the Caesii: a Roman family so widespread that the place name Cesana turns up across half of Italy, from Piedmont to the Veneto.

The village already appears in the Tabula Peutingeriana, the map of the Roman roads: it grew up along a road that linked the roads of Venetia with the so-called road of the Rhine, which by way of Como, Chiavenna, the Splügen pass and Chur reached the upper Danube. In Lombard times the Roman guard post became a proper castrum, with its tower. The oddest piece of history, though, is recent: between 1927 and 1955 Cesana was merged with the neighbouring municipality of Suello, and the two names were fused into one, "Cesello Brianza", which had never existed before and has not existed since. The soil, poor and permeable, was made fertile by centuries of reclamation; until a few decades ago hay was cut here and vines and mulberries were grown.