Piero Puricelli came from Castronno, the engineer whose name remains tied to the design and building of the first motorway in the world, the Milan to Varese. His family, who built roads across Europe with the firm Italstrade, had an Art Nouveau villa put up here at the start of the twentieth century, now owned by the comune. That motorway passes through the village, which has a junction on it. The name, on the other hand, comes from castrum, the fortified settlement, although of the Roman origin many attribute to it no proof has survived.
In the wood west of the built-up area, the one the dialect calls Bosc di Sàss, there are prehistoric rock carvings, perhaps older than the Golasecca culture. The most notable is on a boulder that is taken to have been an altar: on its southern face a human figure is cut in the shape of a cross, with a line beside it that might be a spear, and for this reason the boulder is called the warrior's. One passes close to it along the cycle path. The village has changed province twice: it left Milan in 1801 and Como in 1927.
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📅 Every year, on 27 July
Castronno celebrates Saints Nazarius and Celsus on 27 July. In 2026 the town hosted Italy's first geocaching Mega-Event, drawing over a thousand people from across Europe and even the United States.
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 Castronno, but an easy day trip away.
