Busto Arsizio

Busto Arsizio (Lombard: Büsti Grandi) is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy, in northern Italy, 25 km north of Milan in the province of Varese.The economy of Busto Arsizio is mainly based on industry and commerce.

History

Despite repeated claims by Lega Nord and her local allies about a Celtic heritage, recent studies seem to show that the "bustocchi"'s ancestors were Ligurians, called ‘wild’ by Pliny, ‘marauders and robbers’ by Livy and ‘unshaven and hairy’ by Pompeius Tragus. They were good at working iron and much sought after as mercenary soldiers. A very remote Ligurian influence is perceptible in the local dialect, Bustocco, slightly different from other Western Lombard varieties, according to local expert Luigi Giavini, author of a vocabulary.Varesenews, November 21, 2002

Traditionally these first inhabitants used to set fire to woods made of old and young oaks and black hornbeams, which at that time, covered the whole Padan Plain. This slash-and-burn practice, known as "debbio" in Italian, aimed to create fields where grapevines or cereals such as foxtail, millet and rye were grown, or just to create open spaces where stone huts with thatched roofs were built.By doing this they created a bustum (burnt, in Latin), that is a new settlement which, in order to be distinguished from the other nearby settlements, was assigned a name: arsicium (again...
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