Arcisate

The name of Arcisate has been argued over for centuries. In the fifteenth century the nobleman Bonaventura Castiglioni found, where the feasts of Mercury were once held and via Mercurio now runs, an altar to the Roman god of trade: Arcesius was one of Mercury's epithets, and with the Celtic suffix -ate it could yield Arcisiate. Others read a fortress into the name, others the lime kilns that long carried the local economy. Through the Middle Ages the spelling kept shifting: Arzizate, Arcizate, Arzisate, Arsizate.

In 1900 five pieces of Roman silver came to light here: a jug, a cup, a strainer and a ladle, a complete wine service, plus a spatula, perhaps from a toilet set. Bought almost at once, they ended up in the British Museum, which still holds them; the inscriptions give the owners' names, Titus Utius and his daughter Utia. In the pieve of San Vittore, once head of the whole Valceresio, the Romanesque bell tower and an octagonal baptistery survive from the medieval building; a side chapel holds a marble altar of the Crucifixion, ordered by pope Innocent XI Odescalchi for his family chapel in a Como convent and brought here after its suppression.