Uboldo

The name Uboldo has no Latin root: it may come from the personal name Ugobaldo, or from Ud-bald, Germanic for a holding with a stronghold, and either way it points to the Lombard age. Its first mention, as loco Ugoboldo, is on a stone inscription in the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, recording a gift of land. The Bozzente stream crosses the district on a man-made course: in 1753 it was diverted away from the houses it kept flooding, and has run where they put it ever since.

By the end of the twelfth century Uboldo had its own consuls, and the Crivelli, who held lordly rights here, were at law with them. Their golden sieve is still in the town's arms, beside the letter U and a battlemented tower: a late-antique legend traces the surname to a Roman vestal who, to prove her innocence, carried Tiber water in a sieve without spilling a drop. Ugo Crivelli, consul of Milan in 1117, came from Uboldo; from him descended the Uberto who, archbishop of Milan, became pope as Urban III in 1185. The comune vanished in 1927, absorbed by Saronno, and came back in 1950.