Verano Brianza

Verano is of Roman origin, as Gallo-Roman tombs found here show, and the road from Mediolanum to Bellasium, Milan to Bellagio, ran through it. The name comes from there too: the gentile name Verius with the suffix -anus, through the forms Veri, Verius, Verianus. Until 1928 it was simply Verano: a royal decree, at the podestà's request, added Brianza to keep it apart from the other Verano, in the province of Bolzano.

Between the eleventh and twelfth centuries a castle guarded the Lambro valley, until Frederick I wrecked it in mid-May 1160 in the war against the Lombard communes; it then stayed with the Della Torre even after the Visconti won at Desio. The Capuchin convent, approved by Carlo Borromeo, was set up against heterodox ideas spreading through the countryside, the influence of the Umiliati above all; during the plague of 1630 it took in the poor and the stricken. The arms, quarterly black and silver with a red lion, are those of the de Verano family, named after the place; and the astronaut Paolo Nespoli grew up here.