Liscate

In the village there is a monument that the people of Liscate put up to thank Alessandro Manzoni. The reason is that in the sixteenth chapter of The Betrothed the writer names Liscate, and that was enough: a commune of a few hundred souls at the time found itself written into the most widely read book in Italy and decided to say thank you with a stone. Not everyone gets to thank someone for a passing mention.

Four thousand and fifty inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Milan, in the Martesana, less than three kilometres from Melzo along the Rivoltana road. The name is said to come from the lisca, a marsh plant that still grows here and from which the woven casing of wine flasks was made; another theory derives it instead from the personal name Luscus with the suffix -ate. The bell tower of the church of Saints George and Lawrence stands where an early medieval place of worship once was, and before that a Roman settlement; in the territory the remains of an area dedicated to the goddess Juno have been found.