Luino

It is placed in the nothern part of the Varese Province, on the shore of the Lake Maggiore in a wide inlet near the Swiss border. Today is a populous town and a well-known tourist resort.

Inhabited since the prehistoric times as many engravings discovered at Voldomino and the finds of necropolis datable at the Bronze Age testify.

Luino was named the first time in 1169 as Luvino. It was under the Visconti rule and later to the Rusca, in 1439.

If it played a secondary role during the Middle Ages, it became more important in the area when in 1541 Charles V awarded the town the right to hold a market, in "die Mercurij", alternated to that one of Maccagno.
In 1755, the Austrians move the market to Laveno and only in 1786 it came back to Luino. Since then every Wednesday the stalls fill the main roads of the town, which are full of tourists looking for a good shopping.

Luino is a land of artists: the poet Vittorio Sereni and the writer Piero Chiara were born here. Dario Fo, the 1977 Nobel Prize for literature, lived here as well some other Italian artists such as Renato Pozzetto, Massimo Boldi, Enzo Iacchetti, Francesco Salvi.

To see:

- the Church of San Giuseppe, at the entrance of the town, built in 1666

- the Church of San Pietro, the old parish, rebuilt in 1668 with a fine XI century bell tower, preserves some frescoes by Bernardino Luini

- the Church of the Madonna del Carmine, in the middle of the lakeside promenade, built in 1477

- the Wednesday market