ABSTRACT
The Etruscans found Como, as it were, fresh from the fingers of creation, and peopled its lovely shores and isles with groups worthy of its beauty. The Romans in their turn dislodged the Gauls, and five hundred Greeks are said, under their influence, to have migrated to the Larian lake. This union of classic interest with picturesque beauty, has rendered Como the sojourn of the elegant, and the haunt of the learned; and has procured for it a reputation, which the bolder and more romantic recollections of the middle ages would not, perhaps, have conferred. It forms a semicircle at the head of its lake, and reposes at the foot of an abrupt height, crowned with the remains of the feudal castle of Baradello.
