Minerbio

The town's birth certificate is a public contract. It lies in the De Pactis Altedi, dated 1231: in the Piazza Maggiore of Bologna, before all the people, the podestà Federico da Lavellolungo granted the territory of Altedo and of Minerbio to a hundred and fifty Mantuan families. Why those families moved from the Mantua country is not clear — perhaps to escape the fighting between Guelphs and Ghibellines, perhaps because conditions on the land had worsened — but they settled in what is still the old borgo, recognisable by the orthogonal plan of the castrum, with streets crossing at right angles. Through the present centre ran in those days the old bed of the Savena, which fed the moats of the fortified village: nothing of the river is left, but two stretches of road just outside the built-up area are still called Savena Inferiore, towards Ferrara, and Savena Superiore, towards Bologna.

The rest was written by the Isolani, a family that came from the island of Cyprus — probably the source of the name — grew rich in Bologna on the silk trade, and here began buying land until the place was theirs. In 1369 Domenico Isolani directed by will that a church be raised for the use of the people. The fortress was built in 1403, destroyed when the Landsknechts came through in 1527 and raised again in the mid sixteenth century: inside it keeps a fresco cycle by Amico Aspertini, whose preparatory cartoons are now in the British Museum. Beside it stands the Colombaia tower of 1536, with a helical wooden staircase attributed to Vignola. The Bolognese Senate never accepted a free territory inside its own jurisdiction: the quarrel flared up again in 1712, and in 1734 the Isolani lost their rights for good.