In the Middle Ages the village was called Pieve di Leucate, and its territory took in what is now Locate di Triulzi. Pieve comes from the Latin plebs, the people gathered around a country church; Leucate referred to the marcite, the water-meadow technique of the lower Lombard plain that uses the mild water of the springs. The earliest written record is kept in the Monza archive: the autograph diploma of Lothair I, dated 835, granting his mother-in-law a part of the kingdom called Locadum. The present name is far more recent: in 1862 that of King Victor Emmanuel II was added to the village's own.
Along the Lambro meridionale, erosion has carved the Valle delle Volpi, which holds the lowest point in the whole metropolitan city of Milan, seventy metres. To the north-west the D'Adda family built the castle of Tolcinasco in the sixteenth century, and it never served a military purpose: it was an estate centre shaped like a granary, with an inner passage for carts and a sloping upper floor so the grain slid down more easily. On the town's arms three blue stars above the band may recall the three large farmsteads the village grew out of.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Pieve Emanuele
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Pieve Emanuele, but an easy day trip away.