Bellagio called also "the pearl of Lake Como" was already famous in Roman times. Its beautiful and strategically important position has written its history.
Prehistory to Roman Empire
Even though certain findings testify to a human presence in the surroundings of Bellagio in the Paleolithic Period (about 30,000 years ago) only in the 7th–5th centuries BC on the promontory appears a castellum, a place of worship and of exchange, which served the numerous small villages on the lake.
The Romans introduced the olive tree and the laurel which even today we find in abundance on the shores of the lake. The Romans were the first to use Bellagio as a holiday resort. Pliny the Younger (1st century AD) describes in a letter the long periods he spent in his Bellagio villa, during which he practised not only study and writing but also hunting and fishing.
Middle Ages
The church of St. James, 12th century.
After the Lombard occupation of northern Italy, Bellagio was further fortified: in 744 King Liutprand, settled there. It is thought that by 1100 Bellagio was already a free commune and seat of a tribunal and that its dependence on Como was merely formal. However the strategic position of Bellagio was very important for the city of Como, which had therefore to suffer more than one incursion from Como and fought numerous naval battles against its neighbour. In 1154, under Frederick Barbarossa, Bellagio was forced to swear loyalty and pay a tribute to Como.
Towards the end of the 13th Century, Bellagio, which had participated in numerous wars on the side of the Ghibellines (pro-empire party), definitely became part of the property of the House of Visconti and was integrated into the Duchy of Milan. In 1535, when Francesco II Sforza (the last Duke of Milan) died, there started for Lombardy and for the lands of the Lake of Lario two centuries of onerous Spanish rule (the period about which the novel The Betrothed was written
