Besate

Besate is a village that has counted its dead more than once. The plague came in 1420 and again in 1472, and for that second wave a small lazaretto of straw huts was put up outside the built-up area to take in the infected; the plague of 1630 carried off one inhabitant in five. In 1605 cardinal Federico Borromeo, on a pastoral visit, noted that the community numbered about nine hundred and fifty people and that the façade of the church of San Michele was threatening to fall down.

The other enemy was the Ticino. After the floods of 1814 and 1824, which ruined the crops and destroyed two farmsteads, duke Carlo Visconti di Modrone had the bank lowered and sloped into the current to break the force of the water, and turned his own land into water-meadows: he was also the main wine producer of the place, and in those floods he had lost a good deal. The town hall, on the other hand, is a gift: in 1912 count Napoleone Bertoglio Pisani left the comune his palace so that it should become the municipal seat, and there it still is.