- published: 10 Oct 2010
- views: 13058
Busto Arsizio (Lombard: Büsti Grandi) is a city and comune, in the province of Varese, in the region of Lombardy, in northern Italy, 25 km north of Milan, but only at 5km from its north-westernmost commune of the city Legnano, .
The economy of Busto Arsizio is mainly based on industry and commerce.
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.
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 "burnt", or better "arid") for Busto Arsizio, whose name is actually a tautology; carulfì for nearby Busto Garolfo, cava for Busto Cava, later Buscate.