In the woods, where the municipality meets Lama Mocogno and Pavullo, stands the Ponte d'Ercole: a block of sandstone that erosion has shaped into an arch. You can walk across it, although it crosses nothing at all, only a hollow where water runs when it rains. Further north, at Casa Matteazzi, there is the Salsa della Canalina, which spits out cold mud and gas. And at the Bagni di Brandola there is a sulphurous spring that became famous in 1448: an epidemic was killing the cattle, and someone noticed that the animals that drank there recovered; the local lord sent a sample of the water to the physician Michele Savonarola, grandfather of Girolamo, who confirmed it.
The name Polinagus appears in a document of 931 kept in the chapter archive of Modena, and the parish church is recorded from 1013; then came the counts Da Gombola, who left the castle in the hamlet of that name, the Montecuccoli and finally the Este. The war reached here because the Gothic Line passed close by: at Picciniera di Gombola, Franco Cesana fell in combat, a Jewish boy of twelve, held to be the youngest partisan in Italy and decorated with the bronze medal for military valour. On 12 October 1944 the village suffered a Nazi reprisal and was partly destroyed.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 16 August
On 16 August Polinago, a municipality of 1,742 inhabitants in the province of Modena, celebrates its patron San Rocco with the thousand-year-old fair of San Rocco.
Cooked grape must and wine vinegar aged in wooden barrels: Aceto Balsamico di Modena has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2009.
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 Polinago, but an easy day trip away.
