Castenaso

Castenaso has 14,352 inhabitants east of Bologna, on both banks of the Idice. The name is said to come from the Latin Castrum Nasicae, in memory of the Roman consul Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, who is supposed to have beaten the Boii Gauls here in 190 and 189 BC. That battle is also on the coat of arms, designed in 1852: the Idice pours out of a jug and divides the field, with the Roman insignia on one side and the Gallic on the other. The interesting part is that of that battle there is no trace either in the excavations or in the inscriptions: the arms are the result of a reconstruction made by a commission of local notables, with the intention — legitimate in those days — of giving the village illustrious origins.

There is, however, a real distinction, and no small one: the word "Villanovan", which names the first Iron Age civilisation of Italy, comes from here. Villanova is a hamlet of Castenaso, and it was there that count Giovanni Gozzadini had the estate on which, in the nineteenth century, the burials came to light that gave their name to the whole culture. Today the town has a museum devoted to exactly that. And in the fields around, the Roman centuriation can still be read, almost perfect: the headlands and drainage ditches run where the cardines and decumani ran.