Sirone

In 1654 the people of Sirone bought their own freedom: they obtained release from the fief, that is they paid not to have a lord any more. Until then the village had changed hands several times — in 1147 the Milanese monastery of San Simpliciano, which owned the territory, had granted it in fief to the Sirona family; in 1162, under Frederick Barbarossa, it became a possession of the Chapter of Monza cathedral; then it ended up with the D'Adda, who exercised feudal rights there until the buy-out. On the hill above the village there was a castle, documented from the late fourteenth century, of which dry-stone walls made of remarkably large blocks remain; the tower has ended up in the coat of arms.

On the name there are two hypotheses and no certainty: from the Latin Sironium, said to mean a granary kept hidden, or from the Venetian siron, a channel in marshy ground. The marshes were certainly here: in the nineteenth century, digging peat, a prehistoric axe and flint arrowheads came to light, and towards the end of the eighteenth century — as Cesare Cantù records — the heaths of Sirone were the object of a great reclamation. Of the churches the oldest is San Pietro, of the eleventh century; San Benedetto is of the thirteenth and served as the parish church until 1704, when the title passed to the church of San Carlo, who is the patron saint and is celebrated on 4 November.