Nobody agrees on where the name comes from. Some read a Roman Maccarius in it, others derive it from Maccaja, a damp, landslip-prone spot; more recent research traces it to Machaerium, a legume with a pod shaped like a stiletto, and that thin blade does resemble the township, tapering between Lissone and Canonica Lambro with the Lambro as its natural border. The hamlet of Bareggia belongs half to Macherio and half to Lissone, and the parish that holds it together ignores the civil boundaries and takes in two separate municipalities, a very rare case in the archdiocese of Milan.
The first firm mention is from 1289, when Macherio appears among the churches of the Desio pieve listed in the Liber Notitiae Sanctorum Mediolani. The 1530 census shows how small it was: 106 “mouths”, 97 rural and 9 noble, exempt from the salt tax, and the figure stayed put for two centuries. The arms set the Visconti serpent, half-swallowing a naked child with open arms, above the Albertoni red chevron on gold, of the counts who held jurisdiction in the eighteenth century. Of the textile past the Rivolta Carmignani remains, founded in 1867 and reckoned Brianza's oldest factory.
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📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of August, with a great feast across the whole town centre
Macherio celebrates Saint Cassian on the last Sunday of August, in the church dedicated to him together with Saint Gervase, with a great feast running through the whole town centre.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Macherio, but an easy day trip away.
