Lake Maggiore by way of stories

The first piece which is presented in this section was written by Paolo Morigia and published in his Historia della nobiltà et degne qualità del lago Maggiore printed in Milan in 1603. This is the story of the Beato Alberto Besozzi and of the origin of the Monastery of Santa Caterina del Sasso.
It is one of the oldest descriptions of the place which is then followed by once again taking up the events tied to the founding of the Sanctuary
written by Piero Chiara who is also entrusted with the description of Luino, passing in this way from the historical plane to that of a geography of the soul closer to the spirit of the inhabitants than to the physical nature of the places.
Vittorio Sereni closes the circle by distilling its essence in his poems.
Carlo Amoretti, erudite eighteenth-century traveller, published diverse works treating the description of the places he visited and rich in statistic, economic and geological news and facts. One of these works was Viaggio ai tre laghi: Maggiore, di Lugano e di Como e ne' monti che li circondano, published in 1794.
In the pages which follow we have transcribed some parts of the author's travel descriptions as published in the third edition of 1806. Amoretti presents us with a true grand tour of the Province of Varese, starting out from Milan in the direction of Lake Maggiore and then on towards Lugano. In doing this he describes all the possible alternative routes, annotating historical events, curiosities and observations regarding the environment and the geography of the places. His testimony, a source for many historians of precious information, helps us to understand the history of the Varese region, recognizing its characteristics even at two hundred years from his writings. We let ourselves be accompanied by Amoretti from Milan by way of Gallarate and Sesto up until Angera and then along the River Ticino, on to Luino and then to the Lake of Lugano.
Finally we propose a little curiosity: the beginning of steam navigation on the lake and the description of the boat Verbano by Francesco Medoni, a notary public who worked in Arona in the nineteenth century.