Santa Croce Church

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Despite some claims about a Celtic heritage, recent studies suggest that the " Bustocchi " ' s ancestors were Ligurians, called "wild" by Pliny, "marauders and robbers" by Livy and "unshaven and hairy" by Pompeius Tragus. They were skilled ironworkers and much sought after as mercenary soldiers. A remote Ligurian influence is perceptible in the local dialect, Büstócu, slightly different from other Western Lombard varieties, according to a local expert and historian Luigi Giavini.

Traditionally these first inhabitants used to set fire to woods made of old and young oaks and black hornbeams, which at that time, covered the whole Padan Plain. This slash-and-burn practice, known as "debbio" in Italian, aimed to create fields where grapevines or cereals such as foxtail, millet and rye were grown, or just to create open spaces where stone huts with thatched roofs were built. By doing this, they created a bustum (burnt, in Latin ), that is a new settlement which, in order to be distinguished from the other nearby settlements, was assigned a name: arsicium (again "burnt", or better "arid") for Busto Arsizio, whose name is actually a tautology ; carulfì for nearby Busto Garolfo, cava for Busto Cava, later Buscate.

The slow increase in population was helped by the Insubres, a Gaulish tribe who arrived in successive waves by crossing the Alps c. 500 BCE. It is said that they defeated the Etruscans, who by then controlled the area, leaving some geographical names behind (Arno creek (not to be confused with Florence's river), Castronno, Caronno, Biandronno, etc.).

Busto Arsizio was created on the route between Milan and Lake Maggiore (called "Milan’s road", an alternative route to the existent Sempione ), part of which, before the creation of the Naviglio Grande, made use of the navigational water of the Ticino river.

However, nothing is clearly known about Busto Arsizio's history before the 10th century, when the city's name was first discovered in documents, already with its present name: loco Busti qui dicitur Arsizio. A part of the powerful Contado of the Seprio, in 1176, its citizens likely participated (on both sides) in the famous Battle of Legnano, actually fought between Busto Arsizio's frazione of Borsano and nearby Legnano, when Frederick Barbarossa was defeated by the communal militia of the Lombard League. From the 13th century, the city became renowned for its production of textiles. Even its feudalization in later centuries under several lords, vassals of the masters of Milan, did not stop its slow but constant growth; nor did the plague, which hit hard in 1630, traditionally being stopped by the Virgin Mary after the Bustocchi, always a pious Catholic flock, prayed for respite from the deadly epidemic.

By the mid-19th century, modern industry began to take over strongly; in a few decades, Busto Arsizio became the so-called " Manchester of Italy". In 1864, it was granted privileges by king Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.

Busto Arsizio continued to grow over the next century, absorbing the nearby communities of Borsano and Sacconago in 1927 in a major administrative reform implemented by the Fascist regime and was only marginally damaged even by World War II (a single Allied airdropped bomb is said to have hit the train station). This respite was given, actually, by the fact that the city hosted the important Allied liaison mission with the partisans, the Mission Chrysler, led by Lt. Aldo Icardi, later famous for his involvement in the Holohan murder case. During the conflict, Busto Arsizio was a major industrial centre for war production, and the occupying Germans moved the Italian national radio there. The Italian resistance movement resorted preferably to strikes and sabotage than to overt guerrilla warfare, since those willing to fight mostly took to the Ossola mountains, but strengthened in time, suffering grievous losses to arrests, tortures and deportation to the Nazi lager system. The names of Mauthausen-Gusen and Flossenbürg concentration and extermination camps are sadly known to the Bustocchi, as dozens of their fellow citizens died there. On 25 April 1945, when the partisans took over, Busto Arsizio gave voice to the first free radio channel in northern Italy since the advent of Fascism, at the Church of St. Edward, thanks to Don Ambrogio Gianotti.

After the war, Busto Arsizio turned increasingly on the right of the political spectrum as its bigger industries in the 1960s and 1970s decayed, to be replaced by many familiar small enterprises and a new service-based economy. Today, the city represents a major stronghold for both Forza Italia and Lega Nord right-wing political parties. In 2026 the Olympic flame of the 2026 Winter Olympics passed through the streets of Busto Arsizio.

There are nine districts in Busto Arsizio, these are: Sant'Anna, San Michele, San Giovanni, Sant'Edoardo, Madonna Regina, Beata Giuliana, Santi Apostoli, Borsano and Sacconago.

The historical toponymy of Busto Arsizio includes the names of streets, squares and places in the municipal territory of Busto Arsizio and their history, both those officially present in the street directories and those that no longer exist or are used only by custom. Not all place names are present, but only those with particular links to the history and events of the town and surrounding area. Also listed are some streets with recent odonyms, but nevertheless of great interest because of the transformations they have undergone over time that have changed the urban context, even though these are relatively recent events.

This section contains the names of streets and squares that have disappeared due to demolitions or urban transformations or due to simple redefinition of the municipal toponymy.

Each of the following contrade (districts) corresponded to streets and gates of the town:

The Contrada Basilica was one of the four contrade comprising the territory around the basilica of St John the Baptist, from which it takes its name ( basega literally means basilica). In the second half of the 19th century, the chronicler Luigi Ferrario reported the name Porta Milano as the new toponym of the district, since the gate (renamed Porta Milano) led to the Simplon road and thus to the city of Milan.

It was the western quarter of the town. The name derives from the basin used as a drinking trough for animals.

Contrada San Vico ( Cuntràa Savìgu, or Savico, or Suico )

It was the northernmost contrada and owes its name to the fact that during the plague epidemic of 1524 it was the district least affected by the disease.

Contrada Sciornago ( Cuntràa Sciornágu )

The name of the municipal road known as Strada di S. Alò is found in the 1857 Land Register and corresponds to the current Via Federico Confalonieri, which runs westwards from Piazza Alessandro Manzoni. Previously, in the Teresian Cadastre, the street was called Via Vernaschela because of the crossroads, later removed, with Strada Vernasca, while the name of Sant'Alò is due to the presence of a chapel dedicated to the patron saint of goldsmiths, blacksmiths and farriers, demolished in 1914. The current name of Via Federico Confalonieri dates back to 1906.

As early as the 13th century, there is evidence of the existence of a Via de Bollono that ran from the Porta Basilica meadow to the Cairora farmstead, in the direction of today's Corso Sempione. The toponym does not appear in the Libro della decima (Book of the tithe) of 1399, probably because, as Pietro Antonio Crespi Castoldi reports, not all the houses in the village were subject to the tithe, particularly those located along this road axis. The name Via Bollono was retained until the 17th century and continued as far as Buon Gesù. The route of the road is delineated both in the Teresian Cadastre, where it appears with the name Via Ballone, and in that of 1857, where it takes the name of municipal road from Busto to Buon Gesù. In dialect, however, the road was called Strà Balòn, taking up the older name. The road continued to be called Strada Ballona until the early 20th century. With the first layout of the Ferrovia Mediterranea (Mediterranean Railway) the road was affected by the crossing of the tracks with its level crossing where it now crosses Viale della Gloria; from 1881 the Milan-Gallarate tramway also ran along the road. From the first decade of the 21st century, the street assumed its current name of Corso XX Settembre.

This name is found in the land register of 1857 to indicate the current Via Roma, which runs from east to west south of the historic centre of Busto Arsizio, and Via San Gregorio, which runs north from the eastern end of Via Roma to Via Milano. The route of this road is found in the Teresian Cadastre and traced the inner course of the southern moat of the town (which was located along today's Via Giuseppe Mazzini). The historian Pietro Antonio Crespi Castoldi, speaking of the minor quarters of the Basilica district, reports that one of these is the Contrada Palearia, which probably coincided with the present Via Roma - Via San Gregorio route. The name Palearia can be traced back to straw (perhaps to houses with straw roofs) or to a Cascina Paleata (straw farmstead), but it could also take its name from the De Palaris family, present in Busto in the 14th century. In the 18th century, Canon Petazzi reported a district called Paiè, which was travelled by processions to reach the church of San Gregorio, probably due to the dialectal contraction of Palearia into Paiè. In the Land Register of 1857, the street, limited to the section corresponding to today's Via Roma, is given the odonym of Contrada di San Barnaba, and the name, according to Enrico Crespi, is due to a chapel demolished in 1862 that featured a depiction of St Barnabas. The current name of Via Roma dates back to the time when the Capitoline city became capital of the Kingdom of Italy (20 September 1870).