Desio

The name states a distance: ad decimum, at the tenth mile from Milan, on the Roman road that ran to Bellagio — Desio is the Lombard sister of all the Sestos, Settimos and Quintos of Italy. There is another hypothesis too, deriving it from Jupiter by way of the Latin Deus and that Deussio the village was called until the tenth century. In 649 the archbishop of Milan had a church built here to convert the Lombards of the area, and from it grew a pieve that by the thirteenth century commanded forty-two parishes.

Around the tower of that church, which became the basilica of Santi Siro e Materno, the battle of Desio was fought on 21 January 1277: Ottone Visconti won, captured Guido della Torre, and opened his family's lordship over Milan. Bernabò Visconti came here to hunt and built a castle with a moat. On 31 May 1857 Achille Ratti was born here, who in 1922 would become Pius XI, the pope of the Lateran Pacts and the first mountaineer on the throne: his birthplace is now a museum and study centre. Villa Cusani Traversi Tittoni, with its romantic park and neoclassical rooms, stands where the Franciscan convent stood. And cycling, here, is a weekday religion. Milan and Como equidistant: the centre of gravity of the Brianza.