Bardello

The Bardello is a short and unusual river: it comes out of Lake Varese, of which it is the only outflow, and ends in Lake Maggiore near Besozzo. The village bears its name — or perhaps it is the other way round. There are two theories about the origin: Dante Olivieri made it Latin, from Bardellum; Luigi Brambilla Celtic, from bar, «mountain», and dello, «small». What is certain is that people lived here in the Neolithic already: under the lake the remains of pile dwellings have been found, of the second half of the fifth millennium, and in the village there is a Roman necropolis.

Between 1914 and 1940 Bardello had the station and the workshops of the Varese-Angera tramway; when the tramway closed the building was not abandoned, and today it houses the head office of the Autolinee Varesine, the main road transport company of the Varese country: a century of transport in the same place, changing vehicle. The old convent too has changed trade several times: probably born as a fortified castle, in the eighteenth century it was the Besozzi family's courtyard house, then it became the town hall and the schools, and since 1922 it has been the house of the missionary sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles. Since 1 January 2023, however, Bardello is no longer a comune of its own: it has merged with Malgesso and Bregano into the new comune of Bardello con Malgesso e Bregano.