Brienno
Travelling along the “Regina” road, about twenty kilometres from Como, you find Brienno, a small village that lies on the shore of the lake opposite Nesso. Behind the village rise Monte San Bernardo (1,351 mts.) and Monte Briante (1,279 mts). Of very old origins, the village was almost certainly inhabited before Roman settlement, as the findings of pagan inhabitation reveal, which date back to the fourth and fifth centuries and by a necklace in the form of a snake.
The first documents, related to the settlement, go back to medieval times when it was allied with Barbarossa during the war against Milan and, consequently, became the feud of the Bishop of Como. Other feudatories were Lucrezia Crivelli, who obtained it from Ludovico il Moro, and the Gallio family in the sixteenth century. From 1.927 to 1.948, Brienno constituted one single commune with Laglio. Today the village relies on tourism as its main resource.
SIGHTS:
Church of SS. Nazario e Celso
Although the church has Romanesque origins, its present baroque features are due to rebuilding in the sixteenth century. The only remaining traces to be found of the original structure can be seen in the bell tower. Inside: glass painted (beginning of the fourteenth century); a polyptych of A. Passeri (1508); sixteenth-century frescoes by G.P. Recchi.
Church of S. Vittore
The Romanesque bell tower, with angular pilaster strips and mullioned windows with two lights, is among the oldest of the Como type (the 11th century) and its present nave dates back to the fifth century.
