Oggiona con Santo Stefano

For a few years, at the start of the nineteenth century, Oggiona was the centre of a small empire. In 1805 it had 454 inhabitants; in 1809, with Orago and Cavaria annexed, it had 1286; in 1811, when those were swapped for Peveranza and Solbiate Arno, it had 1250. Then the Restoration put everything back as it was, and by 1853 the village was down to 668 souls again. The municipalities it had administered are today as large as it is or larger: it was a geography decided at a desk by the French and it lasted the space of a decade.

Four thousand two hundred and ninety-five inhabitants in the province of Varese. The place has been inhabited from far back: the museum in Gallarate holds the blade of a Bronze Age dagger found here, and the town hall keeps a Roman bronze coin and a late Roman tomb of the tile-roofed kind. Along the left bank of the Arno ran a ridge route, and an early medieval tower stood watch over it; its remains survive, absorbed into the rear of the church of Santa Maria Annunciata al Castello, which took them inside itself.