At the intersection of Viale Cattaneo and Viale Varese rises the Torre Gattoni, a landmark of both historical and scientific significance. Passing by, one notices a small door at ground level: it provides access to the first electrical substation that supplied power for the lighting of the city of Como, built in the 1930s and active until 1958. In memory of this use, the original electrical panel with its measuring instruments and the old “basculla” transformers have been left in place. It is on the upper floor, however, that important moments in Alessandro Volta’s life and in the path that led him to invent the electric battery took place. In 1783, the military treasury sold the city walls to the Municipality of Como, which in turn transferred several sections to private owners. The Gattoni family acquired the tower, and Giulio Cesare Gattoni—canon and friend of Volta—moved there the Franklin lightning rod that he had previously installed on the nearby palace where he lived, and created inside a physics laboratory and a small natural history museum. From written accounts left by Gattoni himself, we know that the two friends used the lightning rod to capture electricity from the air and were able to predict approaching storms before the rain began. As signaling devices, Gattoni connected to the lightning rod an iron wire covered with small bells that reached his house, while Volta used an electro-phlogopneumatic pistol. Today, the first floor of the tower can be accessed from the adjacent Palazzo Mantero at Via Volta 74. The room is empty, as Gattoni’s collections were later transferred to the Volta High School, but it still retains great charm: through the slits opening in the thick walls of the pentagonal tower, it is easy to imagine its defensive use in the Middle Ages (the structure dates back to the twelfth century) and later during the Five Days of Como in 1848.
