Varenna

Varenna was allied with Milan, and for that reason the forces of Como destroyed it in 1126. Then, when Como destroyed the Isola Comacina too in 1169, it was Varenna that took in the exiles: the quarter built for them was called Insula nova, and that name ended by spreading to the whole village. With the Comacini came also the patriarchino rite, sung in the churches of Varenna until the bishop of Como imposed the Roman one; and the arrival of the exiles is still remembered at the feast of San Giovanni Battista. The place is recorded as a fishing village as early as 769, and the Roman castrum before it had a chessboard plan, with blocks some fifteen metres a side.

On the map of the duchy of Milan painted in the Gallery of Maps of the Vatican palaces both Varenna, written Valena, and the Fiumelatte appear. In 1931 the village almost doubled by annexing Perledo, only to grow small again. From here came Giovanni Battista Pirelli, who founded his company in Milan in 1872. And there is a liturgical peculiarity: although it belongs to the archdiocese of Milan, the parish follows the Roman and not the Ambrosian rite, like other places on the eastern shore of the lake.