“A country that I would call one of the most beautiful in the world” wrote Alessandro Manzoni in the first draft of his novel. He spoke of Lecco, the “great village” linked to the memories of his childhood, which he had chosen as theater for the protagonists of his “story so beautiful”.
To the east of Lake Como lies Lecco, austere territory dominated by the profile of portentous mountains that are the constant background to the panorama and which reach the maximum of spectacularity in their net fall on the shores of the Lake. They are the giants of Piani Resinelli, which they propose as one of the most important mountaineering centers in Italy, and Piani d’Erna, at the feet of that Resegone who inspired Manzoni, an illustrious citizen of the city of Lecco.
Let us therefore walk along the places that inspired the poet in telling the stories of Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella and their marriage that “does not have to be done”.
The most typical itinerary when talking about the Lecco area is surely the one that runs through the places described by Alessandro Manzoni in the Promessi Sposi. It starts from Villa Manzoni in Caleotto that hosted the great novelist in the years of his childhood. Then continue towards Pescarenico “a small group of houses inhabited mostly by fishermen”. Here is the Convent of Frà Cristoforo and the church where Renzo and Lucia went to ask the friar for help.
Today the monastery can only be visited externally. The itinerary then continues in the districts of the upper part of the city. On the road that leads from Germanedo to Olate, there is the meeting place of Don Abbondio with the brave symbolized by a small chapel in Croce Street. In the Olate district there are the Church of Don Abbondio and the presumed house of Lucia, a building dating back to the seventeenth century. In the adjoining district of Acquate there is another house traditionally attributed to Lucia. From the house you can see the Palace of Don Rodrigo, which “stood isolated, like a bell, on the top of one of those hills and scattered and found that coastal …”.
A few kilometers from Lecco, in the municipality of Vercurago, we can admire what remains of the castle of the Unnamed now transformed into a church of the Somasca’s fathers. Also worthy of note is the village of Chiuso where there is the tailor’s house that hosted Lucia and Agnese persecuted by Don Rodrigo. Also here, in the Church of the Blessed Serafino, the Conversion of the Unnamed in the presence of Cardinal Federico Borromeo took place.
