Porto Ceresio

This village has changed its name more often than it changed masters. In feudal times it was called Porto d'Arcisate, after the pieve it belonged to; in 1432, having passed to the Duchy of Milan, it was renamed Porto Morcote because of the Swiss village facing it on the other shore of the lake of Lugano; under the French it became Porto Capolago, then went back to Porto Morcote with the Austrians, then simply Porto. On the eighth of February 1863, in the newborn Kingdom, there were too many Porto: this one took the name of the lake, Ceresio, and the one on Lake Maggiore became Porto Valtravaglia.

On the night of the twenty-fourth of October 1942 the village was bombed and neither houses nor lives were lost; the parish priest called it the infernal night, and the people attributed their escape to Mary Help of Christians, to whom after the war the sanctuary of Selvapiana was dedicated. In 1985 a regional law moved here the San Pietro quarter, until then part of Cuasso al Monte. Three thousand and one inhabitants on the southern shore of the Ceresio, in the province of Varese.