Zelo Surrigone
Welcome to Zelo Surrigone!
This short guide will take you on a journey to discover the hamlet of Zelo Surrigone, located in the metropolitan city of Milan in Lombardy.
Physical geography
Zelo Surrigone, along with the municipalities of Calvignasco and Alzano Scrivia, can be considered the flattest municipality in Italy, with a maximum difference in elevation within the municipal territory of only 1 meter.
Name origins
The name Zelo Surrigone comes from the Latin "agellum," meaning small field, probably because it was a farm received as payment to a veteran of the Roman era, and from "Serugono" after the name of a noble medieval family of the area.
History
During the Napoleonic era, Zelo formed a municipal union with Vermezzo, which was briefly joined by Gudo Visconti. In 2019, it merged with the neighboring municipality of Vermezzo to form the new municipality of Vermezzo with Zelo, reprising the Napoleonic idea two centuries later.
Symbols
The coat of arms of Zelo Surrigone was granted by the President of the Republic decree on September 20, 1977. The figure of the castle derives from the historical presence on the territory of an ancient fifteenth-century castle owned by the Avogadro di Rosate family; the arm that holds the banner is taken from the crest of the Milanese Confalonieri family who owned an eighteenth-century villa in the center of the village.
Monuments and places of interest
Religious architectures
The parish church of Santa Giuliana today appears in the rustic forms of the reconstruction of the building carried out in 1897, never entirely completed. However, the original church was much older: it is already mentioned in some documents around 1000.
The oratory of San Galdino was built in 1418, and inside, you can admire frescoes from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Civil architectures
Built on the ruins of an ancient castle of the Avogadro di Rosate, now in the central Piazza Roma stands the eighteenth-century Palazzo Confalonieri Semira. Here lived Count Federico Confalonieri, an animator of the Risorgimento and as such taken prisoner later by the Austrian Empire in the Spielberg Fortress.
Society
The population of the hamlet of Zelo Surrigone is about 1,872 inhabitants.
Administration
Zelo Surrigone was part of the municipality of Vermezzo with Zelo until 2019, when the two municipalities merged to form the new municipality of Vermezzo with Zelo.
External links
For more information on the hamlet of Zelo Surrigone and the surrounding territory, visit the website of the municipality of Vermezzo with Zelo. Thank you for joining us on the discovery of our small corner of Lombardy!
