The town of Barzanò

"We find ourselves in the heart of Brianza, in places with the most varied and pleasant landscapes. The land that stands before us and awakens our desire to reach it as closely as possible is Barzanò, a village with a quite ancient history [...] Barzanò is located at the foot and partly on the slope of a gentle hill, which sees quite close to the east the other vine-covered hill of Sirtori, which stretches and proceeds like a camel's back all the way to the majestic San Genesio. A circular plain, populated with farmhouses, adorned with lakes and well-cultivated fields, dotted with cottages, small palaces, and churches, unfolds to the north. As the view rises from the valley floor, it runs westward through the sublime peaks of the mountains all the way to the glaciers of Savoy. Within the village, the ruins of an ancient castle, which was destroyed in 1222, can be seen [...]".

This is a description of the gentle and lush landscape of Brianza by Ignazio Cantù, a profound connoisseur of this region and the author of a genuine tourist guide to the territory and its beauties, published in 1837. Even today, for those who arrive here along the main road leading to Lake Como, the town is nestled among the hills and dominated by the little hill where the castle once stood, and where a significant part of the historical and artistic heritage is still preserved, including the Canonica of San Salvatore and the noble villas. Castrum Barzanorum is described in historical sources as a large, fortified village with double walls, towers, drawbridges, and inside it had houses, fields, mills, and everything necessary for self-sufficiency in case of a siege.

The importance of Castrum Barzanorum is attested by a document dated October 4, 1015, in which the German Emperor Henry II donates the castle and all its appurtenances to the Bishop of Como, Alberico. This act involved taking the property away from the brothers Ugo and Berengario as a punishment for their opposition to the emperor's rise to power as King of Italy.

Today, only few traces of the castle are visible: the remains of a tower in the garden of the nearby Villa Nava, the base of a second tower hidden beneath the plaster of Villa Paladini, the archaeological recovery of a section of the castle's boundary wall, now marked in the pavement of the courtyard of the San Salvatore Canonical and the evocative toponym of Via Castello that runs along the hill.