Brinzio has 873 inhabitants at the bottom of the valley that separates the Campo dei Fiori from the Martica, and it is recorded from 979; an independent comune since before the fourteenth century, it has always stayed one, apart from a Napoleonic parenthesis. There are two ideas about the name: the more suggestive traces it to a Gallic root meaning bridges or pile-dwellings, and the archaeology bears it out, because the valley was marshy and the first settlements were exactly of that kind. On the map of the Duchy of Milan frescoed in the Vatican Museums in 1581 the place appears as "Brino"; in dialect people still call it with the article, ul Brinsc.
The rest of the story is written by the weather. Brinzio is a climate island: the ridges around it cut off the mildening influence of Lake Maggiore, and the next villages can be having a different day. More than a metre and a half of rain falls here each year, among the highest amounts in Italy, snow comes regularly from November to March, and the cold record is minus 18 degrees. Until the early twentieth century the torrents overflowed regularly and flooded the streets: on some houses there are still small plaques marking how high the water came. Then one stream was diverted into the little lake and the beds were deepened, and now the water runs down in order towards the Pesegh waterfall, a drop of 27 metres.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on the Sunday closest to 29 June
On the Sunday closest to 29 June Brinzio, a municipality of 873 inhabitants in the province of Varese, celebrates its patrons Saints Peter and Paul with religious processions.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
