Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Its proximity to Lake Como and to the Alps has made Como a popular tourist destination and the city contains numerous works of art, churches, gardens, museums, theatres, parks and palaces: the Duomo (seat of Diocese of Como), the Basilica of Sant’Abbondio, the Villa Olmo, the public gardens with the Tempio Voltiano, the Teatro Sociale, the Broletto (the city’s medieval town hall) and the 20th century Casa del Fascio. Como was the birthplace of a good number of historically notable figures, including the (somewhat obscure) poet Caecilius who is mentioned by Catullus in the 1st century BCE, the far more substantial literary figures of Pliny the Elder and the Younger, Pope Innocent XI, the scientist Alessandro Volta, and Cosima Liszt, second wife of Richard Wagner and long-term director of the Bayreuth Festival.
The economy of Como, until the end of the 1980s, was traditionally based on industry; in particular, the city was world famous for its silk manufacturers but in recent years cheap competition from China has significantly reduced profit margins and many small and mid-sized manufacturers have gone out of business. As a consequence manufacturing is no longer the economic driver and the city has been absorbed into Milan’s metropolitan area where it mainly provides workers to the service industry sector. For these reasons, tourism has become increasingly important for the local economy since the 1990s. The city and the lake have been chosen as the filming location for various recent popular feature films, and this, together with the increasing presence of celebrities who have bought lakeside properties, has heightened the city’s international profile and given a further boost to international tourism.
In 2010, a motion by members of the nationalist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has been submitted to the Swiss parliament requesting the admission of adjacent territories to the Swiss Confederation; Como (and its province) is one of these – while the rest of Europe laught about it.
As another curiosity, the Rockefeller fountain that today stands in the Bronx Zoo in New York City was once in the main square (Piazza Cavour) by the lakeside. It was bought by William Rockefeller in 1902 for 3,500 lira (the estimated equivalent then of $637).
[caption id="attachment_153373" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Best Western Sevastopol Hotel/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Sevastopol is one of two cities with special status in Ukraine (the other being the capital, Kiev), located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. It has a population of 379,000. Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa. There are many historical buildings in the central and eastern parts of the city and Balaklava, some of which are architectural monumen...