LECCO, THAT BRANCH OF LAKE COMO…
… the memory of the places of “The Betrothed” and Manzoni in the city and in the present-day villages: Pescarenico, overlooking the Adda with the church and convent of Fra’ Cristoforo, Villa Manzoni, Lucia’s house in Olate, the climb of the bravos in Acquate (3 hours)
Lecco, on the eastern branch of Lake Como, is synonymous with Alessandro Manzoni and The Betrothed, the novel that all Italians have read or studied at school. To retrace the places of the Spanish Lecco of the two very famous protagonists, Renzo and Lucia, the itinerary starts from the Torre Viscontea. Further on we meet via Bovara with the Vallo of the Spanish walls, the Palazzo della Biblioteca, the former governor’s house and Piazza Manzoni, with the statue of the writer and the backdrop of Mount Resegone. In Pescarenico, the characteristic village along the banks of the Adda River, there are the former Church and the former Convent of Fra Cristoforo, while further upstream, in Olate, there is the alleged house of Lucia. A little further away, at the foot of the Bravi climb, which leads from Olate to Acquate, is the place of the meeting between Don Abbondio and the Bravi of Don Rodrigo.
The itinerary ends with a visit to Villa Manzoni in the Caleotto district, where the writer spent the unhappy years of his childhood and early youth.
The Manzonian itinerary is completed by the Castello dell’Innominato (7 hours)
The one-day itinerary begins in the morning with the places in Lecco linked to the novel I Promessi Sposi, including the interiors of Villa Manzoni, today an interesting Manzonian Museum. It will thus be understood that the most famous passage in Italian literature That branch of Lake Como that turns to the south, between two uninterrupted chains of mountains … was born precisely from the meticulous visual memories of the landscape that the writer saw from this villa. In the afternoon we go to Pescarenico, Olate, Acquate and finally to Vercurago, where in the locality of Somasca, stand the ruins of the Tower of the Castle called dell’Innominato, originally a signal tower of a Carolingian fortification system.
