The name, according to the most accepted explanation — that of the Swiss historian Giovanni Guler von Weineck — comes from terra bona: the soil is fertile and the slope, facing south along the Costiera dei Cech, has a climate so mild that palms and olives grow there, with the Adda below and the Rhaetian Alps above. Traona appears for the first time in 829, in a deed of sale "in Travona". Its fortune came from its position, on the via Valeriana beside the bridge of Ganda: in 983 the emperor Otto II granted the Vicedomini lands in the Valtellina as a fief, and they chose Traona, where from the eleventh century they held the castle of Domofole and levied the toll on the logs floated down the Adda towards Lake Como and on the cattle going to and from the Val Masino.
In 1335 the Visconti conquered the valley and made Traona the head of one of the two squadre of the lower Terziere, with a podestà and the customs house, moved here from Olonio; the Como families of the Parravicini, the Vertemate, the Malacrida and the Omodei arrived, and their palaces are still in the village. The podestà of Traona judged civil and criminal cases over Dubino, Mantello, Cino, Cercino, Mello, Dazio, Campovico, Ardenno and Buglio until 1797. There is a dark page too: as the first sizeable village beyond the border, Traona had taken in Protestant families fleeing Italy, whom the villagers regarded with hostility; in 1620, when they had reached ten per cent of the inhabitants, they were exterminated.
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📅 Every year, on 26 August, with the Palio delle Contrade
Traona celebrates Saint Alexander of Bergamo and Saint Luigi Guanella on 26 August, with the Palio delle Contrade.
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 Traona, but an easy day trip away.
