Valmadrera

Valmadrera sits in a basin on the eastern arm of Lake Como, by its small harbour, closed to the south-east by Monte Barro and to the north-west by the peaks of the Triangolo Lariano; among them the Corni di Canzo, the three summits of the town's arms, gold with a black eagle and a red bend. In the Middle Ages the Vallis Magrera belonged to the pieve of Garlate, guarded by the castle of San Dionigi that Lecco's men besieged in the Ten Years' War; in 1296, amid the fight for the lordship of Milan, it took in refugees from Lecco fleeing the destruction ordered by Matteo I Visconti.

The parish church of Sant'Antonio Abate was built between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century; its new bell tower, opposite the old one, reaches 87.5 metres, among the tallest in Italy. Above the village the medieval sanctuary of San Martino, also called Madonna del Latte, was a military outpost and keeps the casing of a bomb that never went off in the Second World War. Along the sentiero delle vasche, in the gorge cut by the torrente Inferno, small dams still stand that fed the vanished silk mill.