Crevalcore

Crevalcore has 13,527 inhabitants in the plain north-west of Bologna. People have amused themselves over the name for centuries: in the sixteenth century the historian Carlo Sigonio explained it as "heartbreak", the castle built to break the enemy's heart, and indeed on the town's arms there are three red hearts on a white field. The sounder explanation is less epic: it would come from the Latin crepatum corium, the cracked crust, that is the ground of the marshes that dries and splits in summer. The oddest fact, though, is that after the rebuilding of 1231 the town tried to change its name to Allegralcore, "cheer the heart", which was meant to bring luck: it never caught on, and within a century they were back to the old one.

That rebuilding was necessary: the castle had been razed in 1219 by the troops of Frederick II, and the Bolognese put it up again three kilometres away, square, with regular streets, granting tax exemptions to whoever came to live there — they needed people to defend it. It was not enough: in 1239 the emperor's men came back, took it and burned it again. It was then that Bologna laid out a straight road to send reinforcements faster, and that road is still called the Crevalcorese. From Crevalcore, in 1628, came Marcello Malpighi, the doctor who with the microscope founded microscopic anatomy.