From 18 April to 3 June you can find it on newsstands with “La Provincia” – at €8.30 plus the cost of the newspaper – the book “Passeggiate comasche 2” (120 pages) by Clemente Tajana, published from New Press. We propose the introduction of the curator, Pietro Berra, responsible of “L’Ordine” and of the Passeggiate Creative series in which the volume is inserted.
A manual for passionate citizens, slow tourists, women and men who are not satisfied with the surface of places and monuments, but wonder what’s behind them. Categories of the spirit that perhaps do not (yet) represent the majority, but fortunately they are on the increase, otherwise the success of “Passeggiate comasche” would not be explained, the volume by Clemente Tajana previously published as part of the “Creative Walks” series, which takes its name from the field project of the same name by the Sentiero dei Sogni association and is published by New Press Edizioni.
As with films that become cult, a sequel is a must and you have it in your hands: if in the first volume the historic chief engineer of the Municipality of Como, and incurable flâneur, accompanied us through the streets of the historic center and the neighborhoods of capital, in these “Como Walks 2” takes us to delve into the villages located along the banks of the Lario and the so-called “minor lakes”, which are such only in size and certainly not in terms of scenic beauty and historical past. Primarily those of Brianza (Montorfano, Alserio, Pusiano, Segrino and Annone) but also Lake Piano, located between Lario and Ceresio, and that of Mezzola, which at the time of Pliny the Elder was one with the Lake of Como, before it was separated from the alluvial lands of Pian di Spagna.
The perspective, and therefore also the narrative, partially changes compared to the previous volume. If, in the case of the city of Como, step by step Tajana’s gaze rested like a lens on this and that monument, or on this and that street of the peripheral villages, now instead it tends to embrace the complexity of each town and each body of water, connecting historical eras distant in time, landscape, artistic, architectural, socio-economic and hiking peculiarities. In short, it makes us understand that in the lands of Upper Lombardy the multi-millennial interaction between man and nature has given life to a territory that is rich in extraordinary stratifications everywhere. Each village, in Tajana’s accurate description, appears as a microcosm with some characteristics that unite it with its neighbors and others that are absolutely peculiar. For each site the author presents us with an identity card, compiled with extreme precision and completeness, but not cold, because it is not limited to general data, but rather the entry richest in fascinating details is the one that the registry offices usually leave in white: “special signs”. Reading these stories by Tajana, born as articles for “L’Ordine”, the cultural supplement of “La Provincia di Como”, is like looking at a country on Google maps from above and slowly diving into it by turning the mouse wheel: yes they discover villas and rural buildings, Romanesque churches and rationalist gems, quarries of the stones of which our monuments are made and waters that were transport routes, sources of sustenance and even home for our most remote ancestors, the pile-dwellers of Pusiano.
Each chapter opens infinite doors for us, often even in a literal sense, as when the author describes the treasures hidden inside many religious and non-religious buildings, and presents us with countless possibilities for discovering the place examined. Tajana does not indicate a main and pre-packaged way to visit it, but lays it out before the reader and leaves it up to each of us to compose our own itinerary based on his personal interests and passions. Or rather, their own itineraries. Because the most important teaching of Tajana, and of this book, is that none of the villages and lakes he describes can really be summarized in “five or ten things to do”, as is used instead in hit-and-run tourism sites, not to mention disposable. On the contrary, to discover the soul of such beautiful places, to penetrate their secrets and be able to say that you really know them, you have to return there again and again. And, in any case, there will always remain something to discover.
