Solbiate Olona takes the first part of its name from a Salvius or Sulvius, a Roman, with the suffix -ate added to it; the second from the river Olona, along whose bank the village spread out. It appears in the documents from 1017 onwards, and in 1176 it saw Frederick Barbarossa pass through. During the plague of the seventeenth century a lazaretto was built here, the church of San Gregorio, put up in 1632: that same building was opened again for the sick in 1884, when cholera arrived.
At Solbiello, the hamlet that joined the comune at the end of the nineteenth century, stands an eleventh-century church which holds a crucifix believed to be miraculous, brought there in 1772 from the parish church of Solbiate. In those years newborn babies were left in baskets in front of its door, and were then entrusted to the families living nearby. The village changed its face in the nineteenth century with cotton, and the coat of arms tells the whole story: the spindle is the cotton mill, the cogwheel the engineering works, and the silver band that cuts across the shield is the Olona.
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📅 Every year, on 26 July; the fourth Sunday of October brings the feast of the crucifix moved in 1772
Solbiate Olona celebrates Saint Anne on 26 July. In 1772, the crucifix that had anciently stood on the architrave of the parish church was moved above the main altar; its feast was celebrated every fourth Sunday of October.
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Outside Solbiate Olona, but an easy day trip away.
