★ History and art · Milan and BrianzaMilanA church with a plain exterior and an interior frescoed from floor to ceiling, a few steps from the Last Supper. It is known as the Sistine Chapel of Milan.
The storyThe church, built in the early 16th century, belonged to Milan's most important convent. A wall divides it in two: on one side the hall for the faithful, on the other the choir of the enclosed nuns, who followed Mass without being seen. The walls were frescoed by Bernardino Luini, a pupil of Leonardo, and his sons. Next door, in the convent cloisters, is the archaeological museum with a Roman tower.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Milan and BrianzaMilanA garden hidden behind a Renaissance palazzo on Corso Magenta, with a small vineyard of ancient grapes.
The storyIn 1498, while Leonardo was painting the Last Supper in the convent opposite, Ludovico il Moro gave him this vineyard. Leonardo treasured it all his life and mentioned it in his will. After centuries of neglect and wartime bombing, genetic studies of the surviving roots identified the original grape, Malvasia di Candia aromatica, and in 2015 the vineyard was replanted. The palazzo, Casa degli Atellani, was restored in the 1920s by the architect Piero Portaluppi.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Milan and BrianzaCapriate San GervasioAn intact 19th-century workers' village, with the great cotton mill, the workers' cottages, the school, the church and the cemetery.
The storyIn 1878 the industrialist Cristoforo Benigno Crespi built a cotton mill on the banks of the Adda and, around it, an entire village for his workers: houses with gardens, a free school, a clinic, a wash house, a theatre. The owners lived in the castle, and in the cemetery the family mausoleum towers over the workers' graves. It has been a UNESCO site since 1995 as one of the best-preserved examples of a 'company town'. The mill closed in 2003, but the houses are still lived in.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Lake Como, Lake Maggiore and VareseTremezzinaLake Como's only island, covered in woods and the ruins of Romanesque churches, with a single inn.
The storyIn the Middle Ages the island was fortified and populated, allied with Milan. In 1169 the people of Como destroyed it, and tradition says the bishop laid a curse on it: no more bells, no stone upon stone and no innkeeper on the island, on pain of a violent death. In the 20th century the island was bequeathed to the King of Belgium, who returned it to Italy as a retreat for artists of the Brera Academy. The inn that opened in 1947 ends every lunch with the 'fire ritual', a flambé coffee meant to keep the curse at bay.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Lake Como, Lake Maggiore and VareseLeggiunoA medieval hermitage built on a rock face plunging into Lake Maggiore, reached by a stairway or by boat.
The storyAccording to tradition, in the 12th century the merchant Alberto Besozzi survived a shipwreck by praying to Saint Catherine, and in gratitude lived as a hermit in a cave on this cliff. Around the cave grew a church and a convent, linked by porticoes overlooking the void, with frescoes from several centuries.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Lake Como, Lake Maggiore and VareseCastiglione OlonaA Renaissance village in the Olona valley, with frescoes by the Tuscan painter Masolino da Panicale.
The storyIn the 1420s and 1430s Cardinal Branda Castiglioni, who had lived in Florence and Rome, turned his birthplace into a small ideal town in the Tuscan style, bringing in Florentine artists. Masolino frescoed the baptistery with the stories of Saint John the Baptist, among the first examples of Renaissance perspective in Lombardy. That is why the village is called 'an island of Tuscany in Lombardy'.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Valtellina and ValcamonicaCapo di PonteRocks smoothed by glaciers and covered in thousands of carved figures: hunters, warriors, houses, carts, maps and symbols.
The storyFor more than eight thousand years, from the end of the last Ice Age to Roman times, the people of the valley carved over two hundred thousand figures into the rocks. In 1979 the rock art of Valcamonica became the first Italian site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. One of the carved symbols, the 'Camunian rose', has become the logo of the Lombardy Region.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Lake Garda and MantuaLimone sul GardaA village squeezed between the lake and a rock face, with its limonaie, the pillared greenhouses where citrus was grown at the northernmost point in the world.
The storyUntil the 1930s Limone could only be reached by boat or on foot, and its population remained isolated for centuries. In 1980 doctors found a rare genetic variant in one villager, named Apolipoprotein A-I Milano, which seems to protect against cardiovascular disease: according to studies, all carriers descend from a Limone couple who lived in the 18th century.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ Town · Lake Garda and MantuaSabbionetaAn ideal Renaissance town enclosed by star-shaped walls, with palaces, a very long gallery and one of the oldest theatres in Europe.
The storyIt was built from scratch between 1556 and 1591 by Duke Vespasiano Gonzaga, a soldier and man of culture, who wanted a 'little Athens' with regular streets, squares and everything a court needed. The Teatro all'Antica, built by Vincenzo Scamozzi between 1588 and 1590, is one of the first theatres in Europe designed as a free-standing building. When the duke died the town stood still, and it has remained almost intact.
Full page, why go and what's nearby →★ History and art · Valtellina and ValcamonicaPiuroA valley above Chiavenna with a Renaissance palace, the ruins of a buried town and a waterfall leaping over the rocks.
The storyPiuro was a very wealthy town, trading silk and soapstone with half of Europe. On the evening of 4 September 1618 a landslide broke away from Monte Conto and buried it in minutes along with almost all its inhabitants, perhaps a thousand people. Palazzo Vertemate Franchi survived, with its inlaid wooden rooms and its orchard, and can be visited today. Nearby, the Acquafraggia waterfalls were already described by Leonardo da Vinci.
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