The name is said to come from the plum tree, the prugnello, and on the map of the duchy of Milan kept in the Vatican Museums the village appears in the form Bruno. Those who ruled here, however, left a clearer sign than the name: the emblem of the Bossi counts, a young ox, can be seen on the parish church and on the priest's house together with a few epigraphs, one of them dedicated to Bernardo Bossi; according to some writers Brunello was nothing but a fief of that family, who built the parish church beside the house they lived in. The year the parish was founded is unknown, but the last architrave of the church carries the date of its consecration cut into it: 16 October 1545, by Melchiorre Crivelli, bishop of Tagaste and born in Brunello. It is presumed that building it took less than a hundred and fifty years.
The comune has been abolished twice and twice has come back. In 1805 there were 274 inhabitants; in 1809 Brunello was annexed to Azzate, then regained its autonomy; in 1927 it was annexed to Azzate a second time, and a second time became a comune again. In 1936 it touched its lowest point since unification, 318 inhabitants; the highest came in 2008, with a little over a thousand, and the population has slowly fallen since. In 1992 the village gave itself a coat of arms chosen by a popular competition: a drawing that cannot be reduced to any heraldic form, taken from a painting kept in the parish church of Santa Maria Annunciata, with a motto that means more or less «look at Brunello».
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📅 Every year, on 25 March
On 25 March Brunello, a municipality of 1,030 inhabitants in the province of Varese, celebrates its patroness Saint Mary of the Annunciation, to whom the town's church is dedicated.
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.
Outside Brunello, but an easy day trip away.
