On 31 May 1857 Achille Ratti was born in Desio: in 1922 he would become Pius XI, pope of the Lateran Pacts and the papacy's first illustrious mountaineer — his birth house is now a museum and study centre. The basilica of Saints Siro and Materno, with its frescoed dome, and Villa Cusani Traversi Tittoni — romantic park, neoclassical halls — lend the town the tone of a minor Brianza capital.
Cycling here is a weekday religion, and the 1277 battle of Desio, which handed Milan to the Visconti, remains town-square memory. Milan and Como equidistant: Brianza's centre of gravity.
Near Desio
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
