Collecchio

Collecchio has 13,893 inhabitants on the right bank of the Taro, some ten kilometres from Parma. The name comes from the Latin Colliculum, the little hill, the one on which the town grew up around the pieve of San Prospero. In Roman times there was Sustrina in these parts, a centre on the road that led from Parma to Luni: it was an awkward rival of Parma, and in 27 BC Octavian Augustus had it razed to the ground.

The castle of Collecchio, in the fourteenth century, was destroyed three times in thirty years, in the wars between the Rossi, the Pallavicino, the Visconti and the Scaligeri. In 1428 the inhabitants, worn out, built themselves a bastion to defend the village: but it was the podestà of Parma who had it demolished, so that it should not fall into enemy hands. The town was liberated on 27 April 1945, and those who liberated it were the Brazilian soldiers of the expeditionary force sent to Italy. One last thing, from today: in 2015 the comune decided that fireworks let off in its territory must be silent, so as not to frighten animals — it was one of the first councils to do so.