Castel del Rio lies in the upper Santerno valley, some twenty kilometres above Imola, and it takes its name from the Rio stream. Before it, halfway towards Montefune, stood the Massa di Sant'Ambrogio, an early medieval settlement with its own parish church, which on 27 August 1078 became part of Matilda of Canossa's holdings: a violent earthquake emptied it in the mid-sixteenth century, and nothing of it survives today but the name of a chestnut wood, the Selva della Massa.
In 1209 emperor Otto IV invested the Alidosi with the fief, and they held the valley for more than four centuries, until the Papal States annexed the comune in 1638. Of them there remain the palace, now the town hall, and above all the bridge begun in 1499 by Obizzo Alidosi, which by tradition is said to have inspired Leonardo's design — never built — for a bridge over the Golden Horn in Istanbul. Chestnuts are still the identity of the place, and the palace houses both the chestnut museum and the museum of the Gothic Line: on 27 September 1944 Castel del Rio was the first comune in the Bologna area liberated by the Allies.
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📅 Every year, on 7 December
On 7 December Castel del Rio celebrates its patron Saint Ambrose; the town is known for the Sagra del Marrone, the oldest festival of the Santerno valley, founded in 1956.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
