Rho

Rho lies northwest of Milan on an old route toward Lake Maggiore. Its settlement dates to Roman times, and traces of the ancient arrangement of roads can still be discerned in the town. A document of 846 mentions Vicus Raudus, a settlement with a church dedicated to Saint Ambrose and a castle.

In 1160 Frederick Barbarossa destroyed Rho for rebelling against imperial authority, but the settlement was rebuilt. Milan captured Rho in 1313, killing or imprisoning many of its inhabitants. A hospital was established around 1300, and in 1481 its property was acquired by Augustinian friars. During the fifteenth century Milanese nobles built residences in the fertile district. Augustinian and Capuchin monasteries followed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before their destruction in the Napoleonic period.