Nucleo storico di Colonno

Colonno's historic core preserves a medieval street plan of narrow lanes, closely spaced houses and small squares at the water's edge, beneath the terraced slopes of Monte Costolone and the old Strada Regina.

Why it matters

Many Lake Como villages grew grand with villas and hotels; Colonno largely did not, and that is precisely its value. The borgo still reads as a working medieval settlement rather than a resort facade. Its tightly packed houses, stepped alleys and lakefront paving preserve the medieval street pattern. Within a few hundred metres you can read the whole economic history of the western shore: farming terraces above, fishing and market trade below, and the administrative architecture of the old pieve system at the water.

What to notice

Palazzo Pretoria near the lake is identified by its studded wooden doorway from the Cinquecento. The casa a ponte, a house that bridges the Pessetta stream, is an unusual piece of vernacular engineering and a reminder of the flood of 1905, which it commemorates. The alleys widen into small lakefront piazzette, contrasting with the cultivated terraces uphill of the old Strada Regina.

Context and history

The name of the village has been linked since antiquity to Roman colonisation of the Lario shoreline, when farming families were settled along the coast. Its medieval fortunes were bound to Isola Comacina, the fortified island offshore: when the long wars between Como and Milan swept the shore, Colonno shared the island's fate, and when the island was destroyed in the twelfth century its territory passed into Como's orbit. Documents from the fourteenth century already name the comune and its duties, including supplying fresh fish to Como's market. In the sixteenth century the village was enfeoffed to the Alberti family of Colico, and from 1640 it belonged to the Gallio marchionate of Como. Much later, from 1927 to 1950, Colonno was administered together with Sala Comacina and Ossuccio before recovering its independence. The parish church of San Michele Arcangelo fronts the only square that reaches the water.