Olginate stands where the Adda leaves the lake named after the town, at the south end of the Lombard Prealps; it once headed a wider territory with Garlate and Valgreghentino. The name probably comes from the Germanic aucia, "land of water"; a second, openly legendary account credits one Olgina, a Gothic warlord. In Roman times it was Olginatum: the ford drew the via Spluga through, and the medieval arch still called Roman rose on that bridge's ruins.
In 1574 Carlo Borromeo took the seat of the pieve from Garlate and gave it to Olginate, where the church of Sant'Agnese was built to house it: the town gained a provost over six parishes for four centuries, and until Joseph II reordered the diocesan borders in 1787 it held seven more that lay across the frontier, in Venetian territory, for over three centuries. Little is left of Consonno, a medieval farming village pulled down by building speculation in the Sixties: a landslide cut its road up from Olginate in 1976 and it became a ghost village.
Risotto alla Milanese
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Next up: Saint Agnes, patron of the parish that replaced Garlate's in 1574, Thursday 21 January
Nearest airport: Bergamo Orio al Serio, 26 km away
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📅 Every year, on 21 January; its parish replaced Garlate's in 1574
Olginate celebrates Saint Agnes on 21 January, in the church dedicated to her. The Pieve di Sant'Agnese of Olginate religiously supplanted the ancient Pieve di Garlate in 1574: the latter's patron was Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, whose feast is still celebrated on 26 December in the provostry church of Garlate.
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 Olginate, but an easy day trip away.
