Anzola dell'Emilia

The name probably comes from a measure: Prope Castrum Unciola is the first mention, from the eighth century, and the oncia was the unit by which fields were measured here; «dell'Emilia» was added after unification to tell the village from the Anzola in the Ossola valley. The ground it stands on is largely man-made: the network of canals crossing it begins around the year one thousand with Benedictine monks and continues from the fifteenth century with the Zambeccari family, and even in the nineteenth century the council spent its time settling disputes between landowners over which way the drainage should run.

After the battle of Fossalta, in 1249, King Enzo, son of Frederick II, was brought here as a prisoner and spent several days in the castle of Anzola before ending up in Bologna: the tower that carries his name still stands in front of the parish church, while the castle was pulled down in 1600. The village's other record is meteorological: on the fifteenth of February 1956 the thermometer read twenty-six degrees and two tenths below zero, still the lowest temperature ever measured in the Po Valley.