Novate Mezzola
Welcome to Novate Mezzola
If you're looking for a charming place to spend a pleasant vacation discovering the beauties of Lombardy, you shouldn't miss visiting Novate Mezzola! With its 1,894 inhabitants, our municipality, located in the province of Sondrio, is part of the splendid Valchiavenna Mountain Community. But there's more to it than that - there are also some historically rich places to discover.
A bit of history
Novate Mezzola has a long history. Even during Roman times, the "Via Spluga," a Roman road that connected Milan to Lindau and passed through the Spluga Pass, passed through it. During the Middle Ages, the municipality was subject to the powerful Abbey of San Colombano, which founded the monastery of San Colombano in the Campo fraction.
Not only that, the municipality has ancient origins: the toponymy dates back to a villa called "quae dicitur villa nova" that Bishop Alberico had donated in the act of founding the Basilica of Sant'Abbondio in Como in 1013. In the eleventh century, Novate and Verceia were fiefdoms of the monastery of Sant'Abbondio and were entrusted for administration to the Vicedominis.
During the sixteenth century, Novate and Verceia constituted a single municipality under the name of Upper Lezzeno, while at the beginning of the Grisons period, Novate was part of the jurisdiction of Chiavenna.
The municipalities of Novate Mezzola
The municipality of Upper Lezzeno (Novate) was divided into five municipalities: Novate, Codera, Cola with San Giorgio, Campo, and Verceia with the Valle dei Ratti. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Novate had a pre-eminent position among the five municipalities.
Each municipality of the Upper Lezzeno/Novate municipality, through a council, managed its own economy autonomously. Even parish priests were elected autonomously by the municipalities and only later had the blessed of the bishop of Como.
The flood and the name change
Towards the second decade of the sixteenth century, a historic flood of the "Verceia River" buried the ancient Leuzolo and changed its name. The municipality was then called Novate Mezzola, which comes from the overlapping of the name of the Novate Canton with that of Lake Mezzola.
The Austrian prisoner
In 1793, during the French Revolution, French ambassadors Charles-Louis Huguet de Sémonville and Hugues-Bernard Maret were taken prisoner by the Austrians at the Osteria dell'Angelo and were only released after twenty-nine months of captivity, in exchange for Maria Teresa Carlotta di Borbone-Francia.
Conclusions
Novate Mezzola is a pleasant municipality to visit, where you can discover the long history and charm of the natural landscapes of Lombardy. If you're looking for a tourist destination that's not too chaotic and immersed in tranquillity, Novate Mezzola is definitely the place for you. Come discover its beauties, you'll be enchanted by its magic and its history!
