Il GovernoThe History

Every house has its foundations. Every journey has its beginning.
The one you are invited to today spans almost 1,500 years. An emperor and his empress, seated on the throne in Constantinople, dream of rebuilding the empire that fell to the barbarians in the West fifty years earlier.

Only one man would be capable of accomplishing such an impossible mission.

NARSETE

Our Builder, from Armenia to the Limes on the Lake

Armenian, born in what is today the Persian part of his great nation, and a devout Christian, he was a brilliant strategist, always trusted by Theodora, to whom Justinian entrusted the most improbable army in history to complete the reconquest, begun by Belisarius, of the Western Roman Empire that had fallen to the barbarians.
Leading an army of Armenians, Illyrians, Heruli, Gepids, Lombards, Huns, and Persians, he would destroy the Gothic nation and the massive invading Frankish-Alemanni army that soon after attacked him.

At over 75 years old, he would be the last Roman general to celebrate a triumph through the streets of reconquered Rome, returning the Eternal City to its empire.
“So fervent in his prayer vigils that he achieved victory more with supplications to God than with the weapons of war.”
(Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum)

You are now sitting in Rokè of Kastro Comacino.

You are on the Limes that Narses built to defend Milan, mindful of the massacre of March 539. He fortified Isola Comacina, making it an impregnable fortress, bristling with walls and towers with its nine churches and the Cathedral of Saint Euphemia.
On the two shores of the lake facing it, he built his “fortresses,” fortified ports with which his fleet blocked the lake, awaiting the invasion of the Franks from the Maloja Pass. In reality, the Lombards would descend from the east, taking Milan in 569, without approaching Kastro Comacino.

The Last Fortress of Rome

20 Years of Siege

The Men Who Began Italy’s Risorgimento

In 1801, twelve centuries after Narses and Francione, Francesco Bazzoni breathed new life into what remained of the fortress on the rocky outcrop by the lake.
He bought the walls and inserted a granite arch on which he engraved his initials and the date within the Roman access to the inn and tavern. A trader between northern and southern Europe, his family was fascinated by the “new ideas” coming from across the Alps. A band of practical dreamers and men of action, who between Loppia, San Giovanni di Bellagio, and Lezzeno sowed the seeds for a new era and the awakening of a fragmented Italy under foreign rule.

The Bazzoni, the Rezia, and many others, under the secret cover of nights on the lake, gathered around Francesco Melzi d’Eril, the brilliant politician who would become vice president of Napoleon Bonaparte from 1802 to 1805 in the newly established Italian Republic.
After Napoleon’s fall and the restoration by the Congress of Vienna, the sons and grandsons of these early patriots would follow in their fathers’ footsteps.

Now you sit in the rooms where Silvio Pellico and the sons of Count Porro Lambertenghi found refuge between 1819 and 1820 when they spoke of dreams of resurgence with Giunio Bazzoni the poet, Odoardo Bonelli the Sardinian Carbonaro, Giacomo Alfredo Rezia, and the hosts of the Bazzoni family.
Here, where Pellico spent his last night of freedom, laid on a blanket under the barrels in the cellar before his arrest upon returning to Milan, savor the intense taste of life. Like every great and true friendship, theirs was also sealed at the lavish table, with wine and dreams.

Young Giunio Bazzoni would wait for his moment during the Five Days of Milan, where he would be the last to retreat from the bastions of Porta Romana after being among the jurists of the insurgent city.
To him, we owe the ode to the presumed death of Silvio Pellico, which so shook hearts and gave momentum to Italy’s resurgence in 1825. The flowers he clutched in his fist when his body was found cold at dawn on March 10, 1849, a victim of the imperial secret services, have bloomed among the people and in the nation that today welcomes you, with its beauty and affection.

The Custody for Seven Generations

Grandfather Pietro, the family’s only male heir, was believed dead at the front for two years. The following times would be marked by the Great Depression, another world war, and the wait for better moments for Anna Maria and Francesco, the sixth in the dynasty of hosts at il Governo.

In 2019, Pietro, Francesco’s son, decided to restore, with care and affection, the walls that had given him so many memories, emotions, and sweetness.
On Corpus Christi Day of that year, il Governo reopened its doors to guests arriving from all over the globe, often discovering a destiny closely tied to this house.

The eighth generation: Cristina, Michele Francesco, Lucia, and Lisa, have alternated in long or short periods of dedication, in the halls, kitchens, and rooms of il Governo. Touching examples of the love they glimpsed in their grandmother Anna Maria, which for over a millennium has risen from the walls of our home to embrace every guest.

Today, as it was then.
Relive the simple joy of the lives of our fathers, in a corner of paradise, at the table of a rest stop miraculously and mysteriously spared by time.

Once upon a time, there was the taste of authenticity, the flavor of time, the art of goodness.
Once upon a time, and there still is.