Casale Litta

Until 1863 the village was called simply Casale, which is one of the commonest names in Italy; to tell itself apart it took the surname of the Litta, the family that had held neighbouring Tordera in fief. In the municipal arms, beside the chequy of gold and black that was the Litta emblem, there is a tower: it recalls the fortification that stood on the hill above Tordera Superiore, of which few ruins remain, so much so that in dialect the place is still called I torrion, the towers.

The municipality was formed by additions and lost a piece along the way: in 1869 the hamlets of San Pancrazio and Villadosia were annexed to it, while Inarzo, which was part of it, constituted itself an autonomous municipality in 1958. Today the territory takes in the old centre and five hamlets — Bernate, Tordera, Gaggio, San Pancrazio and Villadosia — plus the sparsely inhabited district of Bosco Grande, halfway between Casale and Villadosia. The church of San Biagio is attested from the end of the fourteenth century and holds a nineteenth-century organ by Maroni Biroldi of Varese. Two thousand six hundred and fifty-two inhabitants in the province of Varese.