Riva del Po came into being on the first of January 2019 from the merger of Berra and Ro, and it was not a unanimous decision: in the consultative referendum of the seventh of October 2018 those in favour were about fifty-two per cent. Then the new comune had to give itself an image, and the inhabitants chose that too: in 2021 the draft designs for the coat of arms were put to a public poll, and the winning one went off to Rome, where the decree of concession arrived in 2022. The gonfalon, on the other hand, still has no decree of its own. The town hall is at Berra, but the comune remains a scattered one: houses and churches are spread among Ro, Serravalle, Cologna, Ruina and the other localities, and none of them acts as head of the rest.
The coat of arms, read closely, is an agreement written in figures. The lit torch, standing for liberty, already came from the arms of Berra, so one of the two halves brought something of its own into the new whole. The mill wheel dipping into the waves of the river recalls the floating mills, those mounted on boats and moored in the current, which for centuries ground the grain on both banks of the Po: a trade the two shores had in common long before they had a comune in common. And the star has eight points because eight are the communities that make up the new body. It is not a coat of arms that tells of a founder or a battle: it counts the parts, and holds them together.
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.
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