Consonno has a tormented story. This abandoned village is located at the beginning of the Lecco’s branch of Lake Como. You have to drive along a high road derived through a wood. Everything seems to lead you in another world.
Maybe anybody knows that Consonno was a simple hamlet until the Sixities, when a count and businessman, Mario Bagno, decided to buy it. He planned to develop in this village something like Wonderland, or to be more precise, a sort of Italian Las Vegas.
He threw out the inhabitants and destroyed few buildings: some houses, the church, a municipality, the inn and the only atelier. Everything was substituted by slot machines and strange and odd shaped buildings, an arabesque shopping arcade and a medieval castle, a dance hall and a luxurious hotel. Last but not least an automobile racetrack was built there.
Bagni didn’t get to grips with nature. Indeed in 1976 a landslide isolated Consonno and made it definitivetly a ghost town. Today it’s really impressive because it’s inhabited and there’s a surreal atmosphere: the unfinished odd buildings were invaded by vegetation and everything was convered by rust and decadence.
Some legends tell that the village is populated by ghosts and spirits but people still love it and continue to visit it. Thanks to an association, Friends of Consonno, the ghost town is still alive and many events are organized. Each Sunday Consonno comes back to life.
Would you like to visit it? The village is open from April to October.