Assago

Two explanations compete for the name: the Latin Assagum, from Assius and ager, the field of Assius, a Roman landowner said to have lived where the church of San Desiderio now stands; or the suffix agh, typical of places beside water, and Assago never lacked springs or channels. Under San Desiderio excavations turned up a Roman wall and objects pointing to a farmhouse of the first century, later reused as a burial ground in the early Middle Ages. The village first appears in a document of 1153, among the witnesses to a court sentence: a certain Azo de Axago.

In 1722 today's Assago was still four separate comuni: Assago, Bazzana Sant'Ilario, Bazzanella con Monte Gaudio and Pontirolo. Some old farmsteads changed trade: Cascina Castello holds the library, Villa Borromeo the town hall. The strangest building, though, is gone: the sanctuary of Our Lady of Victory, also known as el domm de Asagh, the cathedral of Assago. Reinforced concrete faced with artificial rock, it went up over twenty years, paid for by the parish priest Davide Malberti, with tableaux of figures reached through inner passages. For years tourists and pilgrims came; in the fifties it was pulled down as unsafe.