Isola Comacina
Ruined medieval stronghold on a lake island, its buried churches unearthed by twentieth-century excavations.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Isola Comacina, the only island on Lake Como, opens in 1914 with archaeologist Ugo Monneret de Villard digging for the bones of a vanished saint and striking the outline of a buried church instead, then another, then an entire lost town. The island had once been a fortified stronghold so influential it allied with Milan against Como, until soldiers backed by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa stormed it in 1169 and burned every building but one. Its bishop, Vidulfo, is said to have answered the destruction with a curse: that no stone would ever be set on stone here again. The guide follows the decades of digging that came after Monneret de Villard's first find.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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