Seveso's origins date back to about the 3rd century BC, when certain areas around Brianza were used as military staging posts for the
Roman conquest of
Gaul. Towards 780, the
monastery at Meda was founded, the jurisdiction of which extended to the territory of Seveso. In 1252 the church of
Saint Peter Martyr (
S. Pietro Martire) was constructed in homage to the
Dominican order brother who had been assassinated in Seveso. The Church of the Seminary preserves in its crypt the knife which was used to kill him. The town was struck in the 16th century by two episodes of
famine and
plague. During the 17th century, the town was ruled by several families, of which the Arese family left a number of outstanding monuments. In 1798, Prince Giuseppe II of the
Napoleonic
Cisalpine Republic ordered the Dominicans to leave the monastery and church of Saint Peter. In the unification of the
Kingdom of Italy, territory from
Barlassina was passed to Seveso. This decision was rejected by the population and the two
comuni were again separated in 1901.
Chemical disaster Seveso made world headlines when, on 10 July 1976, storage vessels at the ICMESA chemical plant ruptured, releasing several kilograms of the
dioxin TCDD (
2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) into the atmosphere. Tens of thousands of farm animals and pets died or were later deliberately slaughtered, though it is believed that there was not a single human death directly attributable to the incident. The event came later to be known as the
Seveso disaster, which later became the eponym for the European Commission's
Seveso directive. Nowadays in the main contaminated area there is a park called "Bosco delle Querce" (Wood of Oaks). == In popular culture==