San Giorgio di Piano

The choice of the saint here was not devotional but practical. When the emperor Otto, in 947, names this place as Castello sancti Georgii, the name is already that of a warrior saint: in unquiet times one chose an armed protector. And the town honoured that choice for centuries with masonry: in the fourteenth century it was fortified with imposing works, and in 1388 the whole castle was put in a state of defence; in 1391 the senate of the free comune of Bologna wanted the Torresotto here, and it is still standing. Of that castle very little remains today: the only witness is the palace beside the spot where the Ferrara gate opened. Before all this the place was called Selva or Massa tauriana and Saltus plano, which means woodland of the plain: the part of the name that says «di Piano» is the oldest of all.

In the hamlet of Cinquanta, during the German occupation, the peasant family of the Candini hid three people in their farmhouse: the Neapolitan captain Vittorio Cuomo, a draft evader, his wife and their small son, who were Jewish. They kept them safe to the end, and on the fourteenth of June 1998 Yad Vashem in Jerusalem recognised Pio and Gina Candini as Righteous Among the Nations. In the churches of the comune the same painter turns up twice, Antonio Randa: in the parish church is his first public work, painted when he was a pupil of Guido Reni, and at Gherghenzano a canvas that had lost its author under encrustations and repaintings, until a restoration brought the signature back. From here, finally, comes Giulietta Masina.