gera lario
History
Surely Gera Lario's history is an old one: this place is on the ancient via Regina route between Como and Chiavenna, at the crossroad of important roads between Italy and Germany. Still in Roman epoch, these territories have been the land of ancient Roman town of Olonium that was in the near Pian di Spagna plan near the Mera river.
Many things of the past have been found: an architrave shows that the local people they called themeselves "Aneuniates" (Olonium inhabitants) adored Jupiter Optimus Maximus; Some mosaics and a funerary column have been excavated at the S. Vincenzo church (sigle XII).
The roman Olonium had a great importance in the Charlemagne epoch, when become an important parish church and market centre for the towns and hamlets on top of lake Como and lower Valtellina, but as the Middle Age advanced, Olonium lost its influence by cause of continuous floodings, so that the baptisim font went to S. Vincenzo in Gera in medieval times and in 1444 the parish went from Olonio to Sorico, also including Gera Lario that become autonomous parish only in 1587.
The town followed the historical destiny of the three upper western lake parishes (Gravedona, Dongo e Sorico). In 1300, in Commons' epoch (Gera become autonomous common in 1620), probably the meetings were taken in the square now in front of the church dedicated to Nostra Signora di Fatima (1634), square in which there still are some houses of reinassance times with some frescoes (excellent those showing Sebastiano and Rocco saints, a Madonna with Child and a Sacred Family).
The wealth of the town was due to fishing abundancy and relative rights of the inhabitants of Gera Lario, with some slik worm breeding, traditional in the lake Como area, and to the farming lands in the Pian di Spagna, always menaced by floodings from Adda and Mera rivers.
The flooding in August 1951 left 17 deads in the small town which has been capable to react with the work of its people, by transforming in what now is a serene oasis of tranquillity upon the lake with a nice own port.
Finally, from 1977 the Telespazio space station (rising in the middle of the Pian di Spagna) brings into the future the name of Gera Lario, linking science and technology in the middle of the Pian di Spagna and lago di Mezzola natural park (estabilished 1983) and that merits to be more known by an intelligent tourism, also foreign, looking for culture, fun and tranquillity.
gera lario
GERA LARIO- La sua chiesa,
la sua terra, la sua gente.
