Gornate Olona

Until 1928 the village was called Gornate Inferiore; then the suppressed municipality of Torba was joined to it and it took the name Gornate Olona. With Torba came the monastery too: a complex where Benedictine nuns stayed until 1453 and which today belongs to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano. In June 2011 the monastery of Torba entered the UNESCO World Heritage list together with the nearby castrum of Castelseprio and the other sites of the project "Longobards in Italy: places of power". It is the most important thing a municipality of two thousand two hundred people can have, and it came to it through an annexation.

The coat of arms, granted in 1989, puts a thousand years together: the cross recalls the Benedictine monastery of Torba; the three pales of silver, red and gold echo the blazons of the Pusterla, Castiglioni and Terzaghi families; a cogwheel stands for the village's industrial complex, which works plastics; and a horse for the horse-breeding, widespread in these parts. The parish church of San Vittore is recorded at the end of the fifteenth century; the little church of Santa Maria di San Salvatore, of the seventeenth, stands outside the built-up area and is reached by a dirt track. The station of Torba-Gornate Olona, on the Valmorea railway, opened in 1915, lost its passenger service in 1952 and closed in 1977 along with the whole line.