Gaggio Montano

The symbol of Gaggio Montano is a lighthouse, and there is no sea: it stands on top of the Sasso di Rocca, the ophiolitic crag around which the village grew, and it is reckoned the only mountain lighthouse in Italy. It was built in 1952 to a design by the engineer Giuseppe Rinaldi as a monument to the fallen of the two world wars, and from up there its light guides no boat: it lights the valleys of the Reno and the Silla. There were plenty of fallen to remember, moreover, who never saw a front: in September 1944 German troops carried out in this comune the massacres of Ronchidoso, Silla and Molinaccio, against the partisan formations and against the civilian population.

The name comes from far back: the first document that names Gaggio is the diploma by which in 753 the Lombard king Aistulf gave his brother-in-law Anselm, abbot of Nonantola, the «Gajum Reginae», the queen's wood. Around 1580 the village appears as «Gazzo» in the Gallery of Maps of the Vatican palaces. The coat of arms too has a double story: by royal decree of 1941 one was granted showing the Sasso di Rocca, but the comune uses another, with a mountain of two unequal peaks, a house on one summit and a tree on the other. Every August the four quarters — Masonte, Serra, Roncole and Fondo di Gaggio — compete in a contest called As giughen la videla, «we're playing for the heifer». And in this mountain village was born and grew Saeco, the coffee machine company.