Besnate

North-west of the village, at the place called Centenate, there is a peaty hollow known as the Lagozza. Two centuries ago a village of pile dwellings from 2800 before Christ was discovered there, and what was found in it — the farming, the weaving, the pottery, all at an unexpected level — was so distinctive that it gave its name to a whole phase of the Neolithic in northern Italy: the Lagozza culture. A few hundred metres further on, a second basin, the Lagozzetta, has yielded another pile settlement, later and less famous.

The recent history of Besnate, on the other hand, is a coming and going of suppressions. Independent until 1869, the comune was dissolved and attached to Arsago Seprio; in 1872 it broke away from Arsago to join Jerago, giving rise to Jerago con Besnate, to which Orago was later added as well; and only in 1907 did it become a comune in its own right again. During the last war the little church of Santa Maria del Castello, consecrated in 1412, served as a hiding place for the library of the Jesuits of the Aloisianum in Gallarate, which the German command had requisitioned.