Brebbia

The name means small parish: from plebula, a diminutive of plebs, and in church Latin the village was called Plebbia. That small parish, however, was the refuge of the archbishops of Milan, who were lords of Brebbia until the fourteenth century and who withdrew here when the air in the city grew heavy: Gotifredo da Castiglione came, and Anselmo V Pusterla, and Enrico Settala, who died at Brebbia. The castle was destroyed in 1263 by the Torriani, and of the place where the archbishops stayed there remains the name of a locality, the Castellazzo.

Today Brebbia is known for something else: pipes. Since 1979 there has been the Pipe Museum, founded to make public the private collection of Enea Buzzi, and the pipes of Gianni Brera are kept there too. In the fields the Brebbia bean is being brought back, the fasòeu de Brebièe, now a Slow Food community. In the chestnut wood of Motta Pivione lies the laghetàsc, a small peat bog where bald cypresses grow. Three thousand three hundred and sixty-two inhabitants in the province of Varese, on Lake Maggiore.