Locally it is still called in dialect “i tre funtan” (the three fountains) because water flows from it and there are three taps, only two of which are working. The water comes from a spring already known in the town because it was used to supply the historic center and the Grand Hotel Brunate, built at the end of the 19th century. In the middle of the same century it was thanks to Antonio Baserga, the future mayor of Brunate, that the spring reached the inhabited centre. Baserga had a 24-metre long underground tunnel built to reach the natural spring that flowed underground. In the 1930s the style of advertising began to change course and the Campari company wanted to install 12 advertising fountains between Tuscany and Lombardy.
The Brunate fountain was built around 1935 by Angelo Ghezzi, then representative of Campari, precisely in that point due to the presence of the small source of spring water. The construction of the fountain was ideal as it had to convey the function of the advertised drinks, namely that of quenching thirst.
They were made by the Tuscan company "Innocenti" and designed by the Florentine sculptor Giuseppe Gronchi. The Campari fountain is considered the first three-dimensional advertising poster and we can only see three in Italy today.