Giulio Carcano was born in Milan on August 7, 1812, to an ancient and noble Milanese family. He first studied at the Longone College, the Milanese noblemen's college, and then enrolled in the law school at the University of Pavia, where he graduated in 1834. At 18, he published Versi alla madre, a collection of poems in memory of the premature death of Carolina Stagnoli, to whom Carcano was very fond. In 1834, at just 22, he published the novella in ottava rima, Ida della Torre, which enjoyed some success and attracted the attention of Austrian censors. In 1839, the publication of his novel Angiola Maria brought him fame beyond Italy; Carcano had by then completely devoted himself to his literary interests, which, however, were not unrelated to a passion for politics and civil society. Always interested in the cause of Italian liberation, he was among the protagonists of the Five Days of Milan in 1848, as also documented by what is kept in the Sala Manzoniana in Lesa.
Having found work as a teacher, he established increasingly strong friendships with great figures of the time such as Ruggero Bonghi, Carlo Tenca, Andrea Maffei and his old friend Cesare CorrentiHe frequented the Countess Maffei's salon, where Giuseppe Verdi was among his closest friends, and the house of Alessandro Manzoni, on Via del Morone, with whom he became in constant contact, becoming almost a daily occurrence. His friendship with Manzoni's stepson continued even after the writer's death, so much so that Stefano Stampa he wanted to dedicate his memoirs to Giulio Carcano, reading to him every letter/chapter he was composing.
After the liberation of Lombardy in 1859, he held various administrative positions, including Secretary of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and then Superintendent of Education. In 1867-68, he served on the Higher Council of Public Education and was President of the Fine Arts Council. His important appointment as a member of the Broglio Commission in January 1868 is documented in the original manuscript preserved in the archives of the Sala Manzoniana in Lesa. In 1876, he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom in recognition of his civic, literary, and moral commitment to the unity of his country.
Giulio Carcano was a poet, writer, and literary historian, and a translator of Shakespeare's entire works, as evidenced by the many manuscripts in the Sala Manzoniana. This work occupied him for forty years and earned him the title of vice-president of the New Shakespeare Society in London.
His “Commemoration of Alessandro Manzoni,” read on November 27, 1873, as President of the Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters, was among the first biographies of Alessandro Manzoni and was reprinted several times.
He moved with his family to Lesa in 1877, the town that had hosted many of his illustrious friends such as Manzoni, Correnti, Cavallini, Bonghi and Stefanino StampaHe died there on August 30, 1884. Universally mourned throughout Italy, a place was prepared for him in the Milan memorial chapel, where his remains would rest near those of the Great Lombard and Tommaso Grossi. The family, having received a space worthy of his name from the municipality in the local cemetery, decided to lay his remains to rest in the village of Lesa.

Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan on March 7, 1785, to Count Pietro (some say Giovanni, one of the four Verri brothers), and Giulia Beccaria, daughter of the famous philosopher Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments. He studied at various colleges, rarely living with his father, and spending time, especially during holidays, at the Caleotto villa in Lecco. The beauty of the surrounding countryside made such an impression on the child that it became the basis for what would become the setting for his great novel, The Betrothed.
Abandoned by his mother at boarding school, he only found her again in 1805 when, at her and her partner's invitation, he set out to join them in Paris. Upon arriving, he found his mother in despair because her partner, Carlo Imbonati, had died; he dedicated the famous poem, "In Morte di Carlo Imbonati," to her. In Paris, he befriended Claude Fauriel and the circle of ideologues. Returning to Italy with his mother, he met Enrichetta Blondel, a Calvinist, at a reception on Lake Como, hosted at the home of Maddalena Imbonati-Sannazari, a relative of Carcano. Blondel became his wife in 1808. The young wife, with whom he began traveling between Milan and Paris, bore him ten children and, after both of them converted in 1810, helped her husband create the peaceful and relaxed family environment he needed to continue his literary work.
For Manzoni, by now a definitive convert not only to Catholicism but also to Romanticism, a period of intense literary creativity began, lasting approximately fifteen years, between 1812 and 1827. During this period, he wrote his greatest works: the Sacred Hymns, On Catholic Morality, The Proclamation of Rimini, The Count of Carmagnola, Adelchi, Pentecost, and then the greatest novel in Italian literature, The Betrothed, published in Milan by Ferrario in 1825/26 but not released for sale until 1827. The novel's success, not only in Italy but also abroad, translated into the main European languages, established him as one of the fathers of universal literature and made Manzoni a point of reference for the whole of Italy.
The death of Enrichetta Manzoni Blondel at Christmas 1833 plunged Manzoni into despair and the difficulty of caring for his large family. In 1837, he married Teresa Borri, Count Decio's widow, for the second time. Stampa, a cultured and wealthy Milanese noblewoman who owned, among other properties, a villa in Lesa sul Lago MaggioreManzoni stayed in Lesa for the first time in the summer of 1839 together with his wife and stepson Stefano. Stampa whom he called “the almost son”. The environment of the Lago Maggiore Manzoni liked it and probably brought his thoughts back to the other lake, the one of his youth. Always attentive to the issues surrounding Italian independence, Manzoni wrote March 1821 and The Proclamation of Rimini, two works in which a sense of homeland is combined with the hope that Italy would soon be free from foreigners and united.
The two works are the basis of what is called "the exile of Lesa", after the Milanese riots of 1848 and Radetzky's return to the Lombard capital on August 6th. From the summer of 1848 to September 1850 Manzoni chose to leave Milan for Lesa, on the Piedmontese shores of the Lago MaggioreManzoni's stay in Lesa was particularly happy, not only because he, a lover of nature and long walks, found it a congenial environment, but also because many of the great writer's acquaintances and friends lived on the lake: Ruggero Bonghi, his son-in-law Massimo D'Azeglio, the Arconatis, the Provanas of Collegno, and Antonio Rosmini, with whom he met daily. His relationship with Rosmini gave rise to the Dialogue of Invention, and an intellectual and spiritual friendship developed between Rosmini and Manzoni, evidenced not only by their correspondence but also by Ruggero Bonghi's work Le Stresiane. During his exile in Lesa, Manzoni returned to address issues of language and history, writing Del romanzo storico.
During his stay in Lesa, Manzoni also discovered some of the area's finest products, products he would never part with for a long time: for example, Lesa peach jam, a famous fruit grown in the area; Serbillano, a wine produced on one of the lands belonging to his stepson, called Serbillano; and the cobbler of Belgirate, the only one, according to Manzoni, capable of making shoes that didn't hurt.
After Rosmini's death in 1855 and that of his wife Teresa in 1861, Manzoni, although invited from many quarters, no longer wanted to return to the lake.
Appointed senator for life in 1860, he continued to deal with linguistic issues and became President of the Broglio Commission of 1868, to which he made a contribution that remained among the most important in resolving the issue of the Italian language.
Now elderly and weakened by the many family losses that had affected him throughout his life, Manzoni passed away on May 22, 1873, in Milan. Grief for the loss of the great writer was immense and universal. His eternal memory is reflected in his immortal literary works, the Requiem Mass that Giuseppe Verdi dedicated to him on the first anniversary of his death, in San Marco in Milan, and the Famedio in the Monumental Cemetery, where his remains were transferred ten years after his death and where they still rest in peace today.

Coming from an ancient family of the Milanese patriciate, Cesare Correnti He completed his initial studies at the Longone College in Milan, and was then admitted in 1833 to the Ghislieri College, where, thanks to friends such as Agostino Depretis and Giulio Carcano, he cultivated his political and patriotic ideas[1]. Having enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Pavia, after graduating in 1837 Correnti decided to undertake a career in the Habsburg administration, collaborating at the same time on the Annali universali di statistiche and the Rivista europea.
Having revealed himself as a vigorous polemicist with the anonymous L'Austria e la Lombardia (1847), Correnti moved on to real political action in 1848. A fighter in the Five Days, at the victorious conclusion of which he held the position of secretary of the provisional Lombard government, he was always a tireless supporter of the Italian idea.
After the armistice, Salasco, who had taken refuge in Piedmont and was elected a member of the Subalpine Parliament, fought in the ranks of the democratic opposition until the end of 1854, when he supported Cavour's plan to have Piedmont enter the Crimean War on the side of France and the United Kingdom. At the same time, he continued his writing career, publishing The Ten Days of the Brescia Insurrection in 1849 and articles in La concordia, Il progresso, Il diritto, and a polite and ironic polemicist in Il nipote del Vestaverde, the almanac he compiled from 1848 to 1858.
A member of the Italian Parliament from 1861, he actively participated in the work of the Chamber until 1886 and served twice as Minister of Education: in 1867, when he promoted the foundation of the Royal Italian Geographical Society, and in 1869-72, a period during which he proposed compulsory elementary education, the abolition of theological faculties, the suppression of religious teaching in secondary schools, and the foundation of institutes of experimental sciences at the University of Rome.
Having broken away from the Right in 1876, he collaborated closely with his friend Depretis, leader of the Historical Left, and on 7 June 1886 was appointed senator by King Umberto I. National member of the Lincei (1873). First president of the Italian Historical Institute for the Middle Ages from 1885 until his death.

President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic · Minister of Economy and Finance · European Commissioner for Competition.

She is an Italian activist and politician, a Holocaust survivor and an active witness to the Shoah.

He was an Italian entrepreneur and politician, founder of the Fininvest group and four-time Prime Minister of the Italian Republic.

Son of Filippo and Marianna Cardara Antona, he was born in 1817 at the castle of Tortorolo near Mede. He belonged to a wealthy landowner family from Lomellina. In 1841, he graduated in law from the University of Turin. A lawyer with liberal leanings, in 1848 he was an assistant judge at the Casale Monferrato court when he was elected to the first term of the Subalpine parliament, and remained a member of parliament (even after the unification of Italy) until his appointment as senator.
Politically, he was part of the right or center-right, sometimes voting against even moderate governments of the traditional right. He was very active in parliamentary activity and served on the presidency bureau for seven legislatures (from the second to the eighth).
In 1868 he became general secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, in the ultraconservative ministry of Menabrea.
In 1873 he was appointed senator, and even in the Senate he was highly esteemed for his expertise in financial and administrative matters.
He died in 1903 in the splendid Cavallini villa in Solcio di Lesa. Two of his brothers, Cesare and Carlo Giuseppe, had been members of parliament. He left behind three children, Emilio, Adelaide, and Filippo, who was also a member of parliament.

Serafino Verazzi, the youngest son of the painter Baldassare, was born in Lesa in 1875. He was 11 years old when his father died and inherited all his assets, including the villa in Lesa. These were managed by a "Guardianship Council" until he came of age.
She married in 1902 and had three children, one of whom probably died at birth.
He lived in Lesa until 1905, then moved to Milan where he opened a painting studio in Via Leopardi, but always remained very attached to the villa in Lesa where he loved to paint, taking refuge in the tower from which he could see the lake.
He also became a Municipal Councillor and then Assessor in Lesa from 1907 to 1923 and President of the Consortium for the Lesa-Comnago-Calogna road until 1920.
In 1910 he participated in the “1st Art Exhibition in Stresa” with the work “Serene March” which achieved considerable success and in 1913 in the Fine Arts Exhibition in Intra.
He took part in the First World War as a lieutenant in the light cavalry and earned a medal for military valor.
In 1936 he moved to Savona where he died in 1945.
Some of his works are kept at the Landscape Museum in Verbania, while another of his works is housed in the Lesa Town Hall: the portrait of Knight Francesco Riva, owner of another beautiful villa in Lesa, known as Villa Alice.

He was born in Caprezzo, a small village located in the Intrasca Valley, along one of the access routes to the Val Grande National Park, on January 6, 1819. He moved with his family to Milan around 1830.
Since he was a child, Baldassare showed a marked propensity for drawing and painting, which was noticed by a relative who was a priest (Don Giuseppe Verazzi), who directed him towards artistic studies at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he entered as a student on 22 April 1833.
In 1842 he stopped attending the Academy and opened a painting studio in Milan.
Between 1842 and 1857 he participated in several exhibitions in the Lombard capital, displaying mainly portraits, the genre that would characterize all his artistic production even after moving to South America.
One of his best-known works dates back to this period: “Fights at Palazzo Litta – An Episode of the Five Days”, in which he portrays himself as a wounded fighter.
He had achieved a certain notoriety and several commissions between Milan and Verbano but between 1855 and 1856, at the age of 36, he decided to emigrate to South America, following the example of other Lombard artists and men of letters who had moved there after the defeat of the 1848 uprisings and the subsequent restoration of Austrian rule.
After a difficult journey, lasting three months due to the lack of wind, the painter landed in Buenos Aires where he opened a studio in which he also gave painting lessons.
Within a few years he achieved great success, so much so that the newspaper “El Nacional” wrote: “In the short time that Mr. Verazzi has lived among us, he has already achieved universal fame in the country.”
The fame he achieved earned him numerous commissions for the execution of portraits of local notables, among which we remember the Allegory of General Justo Josè de Urquiza.
Having moved to Montevideo in 1862, his fame, and consequently his financial fortune, grew further, so much so that he obtained the commission for the frescoes of the monumental cemetery of the capital.
In 1868, rich and famous, Baldassare Verazzi decided to return to Italy, perhaps following the death of his parents.
He first returned to Milan but soon decided to live on Lake Maggiore, attracted by the beauty of Lesa and by the fact that the town was the residence of illustrious figures, starting with Alessandro Manzoni.
On 14 May 1870 he purchased from Commendatore Marco Castellanza, a property located in Villa Lesa, which has since been known as Villa Verazzi (later Villa Aranci).
He began major renovation and expansion work on the villa, which became one of the most admired in the Lesa area.
He also bought and renovated a house in his native Caprezzo, which he named “La Solitudine” where he sometimes took refuge in solitary meditation.
After returning to Italy, his artistic production was very limited and limited to some paintings and frescoes in Caprezzo.
He lived in Lesa between 1870 and 1886, the year of his death, years during which he had several disputes with his neighbors and with the Municipality (as also happened in Caprezzo), also due to his "abrasive" character.
Baldassare Verazzi died in his home in Villa Lesa on January 18, 1886.
He was buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, in the chapel he had built, which suffered serious damage during the bombings of August 1944 and was demolished following the revocation of the concession by the Municipality of Milan in 1961.
In his will he named his 10-year-old son Serafino as universal heir, leaving only the legitimate inheritance to his eldest son Luigi, born in Buenos Aires in 1858.

Born in Milan, he enrolled at the Brera Academy in 1906, where he befriended Aldo Carpi. However, he left Brera the following year to move to Munich to attend the Royal Academy and learn about the artistic trends of the time, the Fauvists and the Expressionists. He then traveled to Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, and Paris.
In 1910 he returned to Italy, first to Milan, then to Caravate in the province of Varese. In 1913 he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris; that same year he was in Rome, where he met Carena, Spadini, and Oppo. In 1914 he moved to Terracina and then, exempted from military service, lived in Positano until 1919. He returned to Milan in 1920, where he shared a studio with Gian Emilio Malerba. That same year he participated in the Venice Biennale and continued to exhibit there until 1948.
In 1923, after getting married, he moved to Solcio di Lesa on the Piedmontese shore of the Lago MaggioreHe participated in the first and second Novecento Italiano exhibitions. From 1931 to 1972 he was present at the Rome Quadriennale. In 1937 he painted the fresco of Moses dictating the laws in the Palace of Justice in Milan.
He died in Solcio di Lesa in 1952 and is buried in the family chapel of the local small cemetery.

He was born in Galliate in 1866 and died in Novara in 1943.
He was one of the most important entrepreneurs in northern Italy, co-owner of the Società Anonima manifattura Rossari e Varzi, of which he held the position of General Manager from the early 900s until 1943, the year of his death.
He was elected Member of Parliament in 1913 and appointed Senator for life in 1939.
He was the uncle of Achille Varzi, the most famous Italian racing driver after Nuvolari, with whom he engaged in historic duels on circuits all over the world.
Endowed with a strong and authoritarian character, Ercole was emotionally very close to his nephew and helped him emerge from a dark period in his life, during which Achille certainly stayed in the villa in Lesa built by his uncle based on a design by Tommaso Buzzi, one of the most sought-after architects by the upper middle class in the 20s and 30s.