Barasso

Barasso appears for the first time in the diploma by which in 725 the Lombard king Liutprand gave many lands of the Varese area to the Augustinian monks, in memory of Saint Augustine's stay not far off, at Casciago, as the guest of his friend Verecundus. From the documents of the Milanese curia it emerges that at Barasso and in the hamlets of Molina and Cassini there were three churches already before the year 1000; the one dedicated to Sant'Ambrogio, at Molina, is of the eleventh century, and the Hospital of the Poor stood built against it.

With neighbouring Luvinate the village played a game of tag: in 1809 it was Luvinate that was annexed to Barasso, but three years later the parts were reversed and Barasso became a frazione of Luvinate; then, in 1927, it ended up inside Comerio, and got its own comune back only in 1957. The coat of arms, of 1989, is almost a list of those born here: the tree for the tall-timber woods, the wheel for the old mills of Molina, the compass for two architects — Emilio Alemagna and Cornelio Bregonzio — and two stars for Saint Nicon of Barasso and for the historian Giacomo da Barasso. Inside the Campo dei Fiori park stands the Casa del Sole, the former heliotherapy colony built in 1935.