Lakes of Brianza
Brianza, a borderland between Milan and Como, boasts a unique territory for the beauty of its landscapes, described by Stendhal and Parini in their verses.
It, also known as the land of the Briantei or Triangolo Lariano lakes, includes the valleys of the Seveso, Lambro and Molgora rivers. All of glacial origin, surround the area and form, together with rivers, streams, slopes, canals and resurgences, a complex water system that guarantees, even in the drier periods, a considerable abundance of water. The fulcrum of this complex surface and underground water system is located right in the middle of Upper Brianza, on Pian d’Erba.
There are few doubts about the origin of these lakes: geologists believe that, in the last glaciation, thick tongues of ice have descended from the Alps to Pian d’Erba and beyond. Subsequently, retreating, they abandoned morainic deposits and in the depressions dug by the ice our lakes were formed. The high Brianza in general but in particular the plain on which the city of Er-ba rises is geologically an alluvial soil (ie very gravel-so / sandy and very permeable) since it is crossed by the Lam-brone, ie a stretch of the Lambro river that has been artificially channeled into Lake Pusiano.
Before it was dammed, in the long periods of rain, dozens and dozens of reels that normally ran in the plain where the lower part of the city now stands, swelled, joined and flooded the whole area, often even submerging part of Incino (ancient municipality of Erba Grass) and accumulating mountains of debris such as sand, gravel, silt and peat.
The debris, transported in hundreds of years by the river Lambro, have gradually accumulated and deposited so much that, most likely, those that today are the lakes of Alserio and Pusiano, once had to be united to form a single large invaded, that described in the first century AD by Pliny the Elder and called by him by the name of Lago d’Eupili.
The charm of the small pre-Alpine lakes of Montorfano, Alserio, Pusiano, Anno-ne and Segrino was far from unknown to the wealthy families of the Milanese upper middle class and bourgeoisie, who, on the shores of those ponds and on the rolling hills surrounding, they built splendid villas, small nature paradises a few tens of kilometers from the city.
The walks immersed in the greenery, the fauna and flora and the five different lakes can do nothing but enchant visitors. A constellation of easily accessible lakes that allow different activities, from a simple walk or horse ride, riding a mountain bike, or at the picnic areas to enjoy the landscape in complete relaxation, or plowing the calm waters with boats or canoes .
