The name comes from a port: there was one on the Sandalo linking the town to the Fossa di Porto, to the Po di Primaro and, through the lagoons of Comacchio, to the sea. The first charter that mentions it dates from 955, a lease describing the lands of the parish of Santa Maria in Porto. These lands then became disputed between Ravenna and Ferrara: an imperial diploma pushed the Ferrarese boundary as far as the Fossa di Bosio, another, seventy-six years later, gave the Terre di Porto back to Ravenna. The matter was settled in 1277, and not by a deed: by a ditch that Azzo Novello had dug to mark his own borders.
The nineteenth century of land reclamation brought labourers and conflict, and gave Portomaggiore the nickname of «capital of strikes»: in 1903 the unemployed still numbered more than two thousand five hundred, and that year the strike of the four thousand five hundred ended in clashes; in 1907 mounted police tore down the barricades raised along the station avenue to keep strike-breakers out. A few kilometres away, at Gambulaga, stands the Delizia del Verginese, which in 1534 Laura Dianti turned from a farm estate into an Este residence.
Flour, lard, oil and sourdough starter, a soft knot at the centre and four thin horns: coppia ferrarese has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2001.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Portomaggiore, but an easy day trip away.
