Dongo is an active center of northwestern Lario. The most ancient inhabited nucleus arose in an elevated position where the fraction ofMartinico is located, afterwards the center expanded in the plain crossed by the Albano torrent, where the industrial zone developed. Since the 1400s there were ovens for working the iron extracted from the mines of the Valle Dogana, today the iron industry has suffered a sharp decline. The village has a wonderful view up to Bellagio in the south, and towards Gravedona and the end of Lake Como to the north. The panorama is always very wide: marvelous sunsets, when the Mesolcine Pre-Alps take on pinkish and violet luminescences while the lake and the woods are already covered with semi-darkness.
Among the palaces stands out the neoclassical Manzi today town hall and home of the Museum of the end of the War, a palace built by Pietro Gilardoni (1824), a pupil of Pollak, whose interior is lavishly decorated with frescoes from the school of Appiani. Near the bridge on the Albano we find the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Lacrime dating back to the year 1500, Madonna venerated as miraculous. Following to the left of the Town Hall, you reach the Romanesque church of Santa Maria di Màrtinico, built between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, inside a nave closed by a semicircular apse, among the sacred furnishings, a cross in golden silver by Francesco di Gregorio of 1513. Upstream of the church, a walk of about 30 minutes through the hamlet of Barbignano, leads to the Sanctuary of San Gottardo, patron of Dongo, inside which there is an altar piece by Gian Giacomo Barbelli.
In Dongo the last act of life of the fascist regime began with the capture, on April 27, 1945, of Mussolini’s patrol and the shooting of 15 ministers and hierarchs.