This page is totally atypical compared to this site general contents; I have in fact decided to insert a short but very peculiar parenthesis, dedicated to my hometown and to its province, always in relationship to the Old Italian States, and containing a "mix" of history, post-cards, stamps and cancellations...
A page that does not have a precise meaning, but that simply wants to show how stamps can be the starting point to go in more depth on history and culture, beside being an amusing hobby.

I was born in Como and I live here, a pleasant small town of north Italy, with about 100,000 habitants and located near to the Swithzerland border, on a lake that carries the same name: Como Lake (Fig. 1-1c).
Como is well known for its natural and landscape beauties, as the lake and the mountains all around, as well as for some typical products, like the handcraft wood carving and even more for fabrics and silk in particular.
Somebody may perhaps have heard its name from Alessandro Volta the electric cell inventor.

Fig. 1: the Como town (partial picture with the initial segment of the lake)

Fig. 1b: initial segment of the lake


Fig. 1c: partial view of the city

It's a settlement of very old origin: in fact important archeological remaining of this past have been found.
It has been conquered by Romans from 196 bc, destroyed and rebuilt finally by Julius Cesar who called it "Novum Comum" and fortified it.
In the centuries the town was in the middle of wars and conquests also and may be mainly, due to its geographic very fortunate position, easy transit path to Swithzerland and therefore with North Europe. The Ostrogoti, Bizantini, Franchi, Milanesi, Franch and Spaniard in fact dominated it. From 1714 it was under the Austrian to go back in the hands of the French of Napoleon.
In 1815, with the Vienna Treaty, which so many times have been recalled in this site, went back under the Austrian flag, inside the Lombardy-Venetia territory. Finally the Risorgimento revolts, that brought to the Second Independence War and to Giuseppe Garibaldi victorious battle to free it definitively (San Fermo battle, May 27th 1859). It was annexed to the Sardinia Kingdom and therefore from 1861 to the Italian Kingdom.

I represent here just for curiosity some postcard of end '800 as was in reality the Como town. Because the postcards appeared only in the last 1800 years, the images are not exactly as it was the town at the Lombardy-Venetia time, but I believe that they can anyway give an indication enough realistic of the huge difference in structure and about the way of life of that time.
The beautiful postcards come from the huge collection of my brother, whom my thanks go to (by the way if somebody has old Como postcards or of the first lake basin, please contact me!!!).

Panorama	Panorama	Harbor	Lake promenade

 

Cathedral	Cathedral	Lake promenade	Steamship

 

Flooding	Volta square	The towers	Life scenes

 

Life scenes	The square	The railroad station	S. Fedele square

 

The funicular railway	Life scenes	G. Garibaldi monument

If somebody want further info on Como, besides writing to me, can browse several existent sites, easy to find with any search engine.