In medieval documents the village appears as Olzate, a learned form of a dialect name from a Celtic root meaning arable or ploughed land; the ending -ate, common across Insubria, is Celtic too. The qualifier Olonae, or Oronae, was added only after the year one thousand, to tell the place from its namesakes and tie it to the river valley. Over the Roman settlement grew a pieve whose jurisdiction reached from Cairate to Cislago and Sacconago, and so covered Busto Arsizio.
One detail of that pieve is unusual: it had two mother churches, a winter one for Saint Stephen and a summer one for Saint Lawrence. In 1583 Carlo Borromeo moved the provostship and chapter to Busto Arsizio, by then far richer, and Olgiate shrank to a farming parish of seven hundred souls. In 1959 a plane came down on its land, one of Italy's worst civil aviation disasters, killing seventy people; among them Maria Sacchetti, sister of the physicist Enrico Fermi, who by her own will lies in the village cemetery.
Risotto alla Milanese
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Next up: Saints Stephen and Lawrence, patrons of the land of the pastoral community, Saturday 26 December
Nearest airport: Milano Malpensa, 12 km away
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📅 Every year, on 26 December
Olgiate Olona celebrates Saints Stephen and Lawrence on 26 December, in the church dedicated to them. The Church of San Gregorio Magno is instead the patronal church of the whole pastoral community of Olgiate Olona.
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 Olgiate Olona, but an easy day trip away.
