Sesto Calende

Sesto Calende sits at the exact point where Lake Maggiore narrows back into a river and the Ticino begins its run toward the Po, fifty-five kilometers northwest of Milano. The town is the type site of the Golasecca culture, an Iron Age civilization that occupied this stretch of Lombardia and Piemonte between roughly 900 and 400 BC, named after the village across the river. Rich princely tombs excavated here in the nineteenth century define the culture in textbooks; the Civic Archaeological Museum displays grave goods, weapons and imported Etruscan vessels found in the necropolis.

The Abbazia di San Donato, a Romanesque foundation begun in the ninth century and completed in the tenth, stands above the river with a porticoed atrium and frescoed apse. The town was the seat of the SIAI-Marchetti aircraft works through most of the twentieth century, building flying boats and military trainers. The river itself frames the town: the Ticino Valley Regional Park covers both banks, with herons, swans and grebes that are easier to spot here than anywhere downstream.