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Julius Caesar founded a settlement here around 59 BC, calling it Novum Comum, and you can still feel the Roman bones of the street grid in the old town. Alessandro Volta was born in Como in 1745 and gave his name to the unit of electrical potential; there is a museum dedicated to him on the lake shore that most visitors walk past on their way to the waterfront. Pliny the Elder was born here. Pliny the Younger had his villa nearby. Como had a habit of producing Romans who mattered.

The silk industry transformed the city in the 20th century.

By the early 1970s, Como's mills were producing more silk than China and Japan combined. The Via Torino in the Camerlata neighborhood was lined with fabric showrooms supplying the European fashion houses. Competition from Asia compressed the industry severely after the 1990s, but several workshops remain, and the weekly market still has silk vendors. The Como Cathedral, begun in 1396 and not completed until 1740 thanks to intermittent building and rebuilding, stands at the edge of the old town in a Gothic-Renaissance synthesis that took three centuries to get right.