Cantello

Until 1895 the village was called Cazzone. The name came from Cazono and then from cazzü, the big wooden ladle with a tail-shaped handle used to empty barrels of grape marc or to scoop up seed — a tool, nothing more, and for centuries nobody found anything odd in it. Then came the unification of Italy, and with it the dialects of everyone else: words that in Lombardy had never meant anything vulgar began to mean it, and the municipality had to change its name. It chose Cantello, a diminutive of the Latin canthus, meaning a small patch of land.

There are four thousand five hundred and sixty-nine inhabitants, in the province of Varese, on the Swiss border, where the hamlet of Gaggiolo has hosted a busy crossing point since 1516. On the plateau the roccoli survive, circular terraces of hornbeam pruned into arbours that served to spread nets for migrating birds and at the same time to study them: those caught were ringed and reported back to the stations they had come from. The roccolo of Ligurno, the oldest, belonged to senator Luigi Gasparotto and is a national monument. In the sandy heathland grows the white asparagus that carries the village's name.