Fornovo di Taro

Fornovo is the Forum Novum of the Romans, the market town on the road between Parma and Luni, grown up where the valleys of the Taro, the Ceno and the Sporzana meet. Under the square in front of the Romanesque pieve there was a pagan oracular temple, probably of Mercury: it was brought to light in 1867, and with it some sortes, the lots by which the oracle answered. On its ruins, in Lombard times, a pieve was built, and the first time it is spoken of is over a quarrel: on the twenty-fourth of August of the year 854 the archpriest of Fornovo and the archpriest of Varsi were disputing territory, and the bishop of Piacenza Seufredo II closed the matter by assigning monte Spinola to the second. In the early twelve hundreds the monks of Montepascio built a bridge over the Taro and, on the left bank, a chapel and a hospital for pilgrims: this was the road of monte Bardone, the only link between the Po plain and Tuscany, walked all through the Middle Ages by those going to Rome from northern Europe. In 1294 a flood of the Taro destroyed the bridge, and for centuries nobody rebuilt it.

The battle of Fornovo, the one of 1495 between Charles VIII of France and the Italian league, was not fought in the village but at Qualatica nearby — and Qualatica is no longer there: the waters of the Taro wiped it out. The king of France was camped on the left bank of the river, the anti-French league of the Milanese and the Venetians, led by Francesco II Gonzaga, on the right, between Oppiano and Giarola. The marquis of Mantua afterwards had Sperandio cast a commemorative medal with himself on horseback at Fornovo and the words Ob Restitutam Italiae Libertatem, for the liberty of Italy restored. In 1862 the village had «di Taro» added to it, to tell it apart from the Fornovo of the Bergamo country; on the second of July 1883 the railway came from Parma, the first stretch of the Pontremolese line. And on the twenty-ninth of April 1945 Fornovo was freed from the German and fascist troops by Brazilian soldiers.