Walking through the historic center, an attentive observer may encounter the most important figures in Como’s history all gathered together. It happens when passing under the portico that borders the Unicredit Banca building in Piazza Cavour, at the corner with Via Florio da Bontà, where four bronze bas-reliefs depict “Plinius” (it is not specified whether the Elder or the Younger, and perhaps the ambiguity is intentional, so as not to exclude either of them), Paolo Giovio, Pope Innocent XI, and Alessandro Volta. They were inaugurated in 1965 at the same time as the headquarters of the bank, which was then called Credito Italiano, and were created by the Como-based sculptor Felice Mina, born in Cagno in 1912 and died in Cantello, in the province of Varese, in 1976. The latter owes its fame in particular to a medal of Pope John XXIII taken into orbit by NASA Colonel Frank Borman, commander of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, on the flight that took three men around the Moon for the first time from December 21 to 27, 1968. Borman himself gave it to Paul VI on February 15, 1969. The four illustrious figures from Como are depicted wearing clothes and holding objects that make them instantly recognizable: Pliny is surrounded by books, mainly in scroll form as they were in Roman times; the humanist Giovio is busy writing with a quill pen, as in the portrait of him in his collection kept at the Pinacoteca Civica; Innocent XI is portrayed on the throne of St. Peter in the Vatican, and Volta with his ever-present battery.
