Lecco: that branch of the lake of Como

The beginning of The Betrothed is a beautiful photography of Lecco and its surrounding territory, told with harmonious gracefulness by the author that made it famous all over the world: Alessandro Manzoni.

It almost seems that the writer viewed it from the lake and then from above, because he outlines precisely the natural conformation of Lecco. A lake with a succession of bays and gulfs, framed by mountain ranges protecting the town: San Martino, Resegone, with its unmistakable profile as a saw and the three streams cutting Lecco in three parts. A lake which narrows and re-become the Adda river, whose shores in Lecco are joined by the bridge Azzone Visconti. All around the slopes, hills, fields and vineyards with farmhouses and villas and woods that hug the mountains.

A marvelous image of Lecco, about which Manzoni said: “a country I would call one of the most beautiful in the world!”

Cover image: illustration darft for the edition of The Betrothed dated 1840 Library Braidense
Cover image: © eccoLecco

 Chapter I

That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south between two unbroken chains of mountains, presenting to the eye a succession of bays and gulfs, formed by their jutting and retiring ridges, suddenly contracts itself between a headland to the right and an extended sloping bank on the left, and assumes the flow and appearance of a river. The bridge by which the two shores are here united, appears to render the transformation more apparent, and marks the point at which the lake ceases, and the Adda recommences, to resume, however, the name of Lake where the again receding banks allow the water to expand itself anew into bays and gulfs. The bank, formed by the deposit of three large mountain streams, descends from the bases of two contiguous mountains, the one called St. Martin, the other by a Lombard name, Resegone, from its long line of summits, which in truth give it the appearance of a saw; so that there is no one who would not at first sight, especially viewing it in front, from the ramparts of Milan that face the north, at once distinguish it in all that extensive range from other mountains of less name and more ordinary form. The bank, for a considerable distance, rises with a gentle and continual ascent, then breaks into hills and hollows, rugged or level land, according to the formation of the mountain rocks, and the action of the floods. Its extreme border, intersected by the mountain torrents, is composed almost entirely of sand and pebbles; the other parts of fields and vineyards, scattered farms, country seats, and villages, with here and there a wood which extends up the mountain side.  

Articolo aggiornato il 4 October 2023 da eccoLecco