Lombard people arrived in Italy in A.D. 568. In the beginning they occupied the territory of the Venetian region. Next year they invaded the other territories of northern Italy, except for some lands which remained Byzantines dominions, a kind of enclaves called “islands”. The lands around Lecco became Lombard dominions between A.D. 580 and 588, probably step by step with a gradual subjection of localities like the Barro Hill and the Comacina Island. Likely all this area became a king’s property, at that time Autari, managed by wardens charged to administrate it.

According to this hypothesis, Capiate was a tributary property, how the testament of Rottopert d’Agrate shows us. This document dates from A.D. 745. Rottopert was a royal official. By his testament he assigned the tributary properties of Trezzo and Capiate (in the document written Clapiate) to his daughter Gradana, the only women of his family who was allowed to marry.

The word Capiate could come from the name of the second Lombard king, Clep, who was Duke of Bergamo before becoming sovereign.

"casa illa quod habeo in clapiate"

In A.D. 774 Charlemagne conquered the Lombard Kingdom, after he had defeated and banished the last Lombard king, Desiderio. Charlemagne acquired the title of “king of Lombard and Frank people” and, in A.D. 800, he also became emperor.

After his last descendants died, the imperial crown passed into the hand of a family whose members were called Guidonidi. Among them, there were the Counts of Lecco, who dominated the lands of the valley of the Adda river till the A.D. 975 when Attone, the last Count, died. In that year the valley was divided in two parts, physically separated by the Adda river and assigned to different authorities: the lands on the eastern side, nowadays called the St. Martin Valley, became properties of the Curia of Bergamo; the lands on the western one, called Brianza like the mountain overlooking that region, became properties of the Martesana District. After those events, the Comacina lost its identity definitively.

On the left, the main relationships between the Lombard royal families and the Frank ones. The Counts of Lecco are highlighted in yellow (to enlarge, click on the image).