Lecco overlooks Lake Como and is embraced by the mountains, from S. Martino to Resegone: it is not surprising that artists like Manzoni himself, but also Stendhal, Parini and Puccini, have been enchanted by the panorama of his lakefront.
The historic center is surrounded by walls built by the Visconti family to whom we owe the iconic Ponte Vecchio mentioned by Manzoni himself as the point where the river Adda begins and the lake ends.
The heart of Lecco is Piazza XX Settembre, which overlooks the eighteenth-century Visconti Tower which houses the “Museum of the Mountain and the Lecchese Alpinism”. Equally pleasant is Piazza Cermenati overlooking the lake on which stands the Palazzo delle Paure with the rectangular tower that bears the heraldic emblem of the Visconti.
The main church of Lecco is the Basilica di S.Nicolò dedicated to the patron saint of boatmen and sailors. You can not visit Lecco without following in the footsteps of the famous Manzoni characters, starting from the A. Manzoni Villa-Museum, in the Caleotto district, an elegant neoclassical villa with an art gallery, a library and a section dedicated to the great poet with furnishings related to his childhood, documents and objects related to the novel “I promessi sposi”.
To the south of the village is the cluster of fishermen’s houses mentioned by Manzoni; in the district of Olate, where Don Abbondio was thought to work, there is Lucia’s house, while in Acquate there is the chapel of Via Croce that would correspond to the “Tabernacolo dei Bravi”, where the latter waited for Don Abbondio.
Cover photo by Pietro Pensa via Wikimedia Commons
