Venegono Superiore

The earliest documents naming Venegono Superiore date from the eleventh century, but the land keeps older marks: traces of the Roman road between Comum and Novaria, remains of centuriation and a votive cippus. It belonged to the Seprio and then to the Duchy of Milan, and its story stays tied to that of Venegono Inferiore: by 1454 the two were already separate, an imperial diploma of Frederick III of Habsburg having granted Venegono Superiore in fief to the Castiglioni and Venegono Inferiore to the Pusterla. They formed one municipality named Venegono under Napoleon and again in 1928, a union that lasted until 1960.

The old centre is dominated by the castle, now a neo-Gothic rebuilding on a U-shaped plan open to the south, set in a park and held by the institute of the African missions. Its origin is traced to the end of the ninth century, when Berengar I, unable to provide the defences himself, left private citizens the burden of building castles: a walled enclosure with a wall-walk, houses and storerooms for the harvest, and at the centre the lord's domus magna, where people sheltered during raids. Witchcraft trials were held there in the Middle Ages, and the cases of Elisabetta Oleari and Margherita Fornasari are recorded at the castle and at Monteruzzo, Monterosso and Pianbosco. The library holds over eight thousand volumes given by Tiziano Sclavi, the creator of Dylan Dog.