During the philatelic period of the Old States, Como was part o f the Lombardy-Venetia
kingdom and it was therefore under the Austrian dominance.
The town was very important for its geographic position that, as already said,
was allowing an easy contact with Swithzerland and North Europe; it was not
a case that one of the first railroad pieces built in the territory was the
one connecting Milano, Monza and Camerlata, a Como suburb.
The province was very large, much more than what is today: it comprehended
in fact also the territories of the Lecco and Varese provinces today autonomous.
The Postal Offices open (even is not with continuity) from June 1st 1850 to
May 27th 1859 were in total 35.
To understand the geographic position of the province, I show a small maps
of the Lombardy-Venetia territory and one of the province (taken
from "Annullamenti del Lombardo-Veneto" of R. Alianello,
ed. Sassone 1972).
Fig. 1: the Lombardy-Venetia
Kingdom and the Como province (in yellow)
Fig. 2: the old Como province,
in detail
As it can be seen from the above map, only 15 of the old Como Postal Offices
are still part of the today province territory. Each of them had at its disposal
a cancellation tool and, in some case, even more than one. With the help of some friends, specilized in this field, I tried to find out all the kinds of cancellation, ONLY for the types used during the philatelic period and with the exclusion of the services-cancellations (i.e. Raccomandata, Franca etc.); for each postal-office it has been created an "ad-hoc" page: it is enough to click on the name of the office to see the relative page. In each page you'll find informations about any cancellation, period of usage and valutations, officials (and not...).
NOTES: the cancellations on Austria are not taken in consideration for the valutation because this section is regarding only the stamps from Lombardy-Venetia, although some pictures are present in the pages. Furthermore I have to underline that the main differences in the valutations between the collectors estimations and the catalogue ones, are related to the utilization on revenues-stamps , because I think their valutations are absolutely understimated.
| Offices in current province of COMO |
Offices in current province of VARESE |
Offices in current province of LECCO |
|---|---|---|
| APPIANO | ANGERA | BELLANO |
| ASSO | ARCISATE | CARSANIGA |
| BELLAGIO | CUVIO | INTROBBIO |
| CAMERLATA | GAVIRATE | LECCO |
| CANTU' | LAVENO | MISSAGLIA |
| CANZO | LUINO | MONTICELLO |
| CASTIGLIONE d'Intelvi | MACCAGNO | OGGIONO |
| COLICO | PORTO VALTRAVAGLIA | TONZANICO |
| COMO | TRADATE | VARENNA |
| DONGO | VARESE | |
| ERBA | VIGGIU' | |
| FINO | ||
| GRAVEDONA | ||
| MENAGGIO | ||
| PORLEZZA | ||