Medesano

Whoever passed through here was going to Rome. Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, took this road in 990 and noted Metane as the thirty-fifth stage of his journey home; the route, later called the Via Francigena, forced travellers to cross the Taro, and the river had no bridges. The crossing was made by boat, at Felegara and at Ramiola, and that is why the municipal coat of arms carries a ship's wheel, beside the three towers of the castles of Medesano, Roccalanzona and Varano Marchesi and a pine for the woods.

Holding that crossing cost the castle on the Poggio dearly: built in the middle of the twelfth century by the Pallavicino, it was taken, burnt and raised again so many times that the chronicles lose count. The most eloquent case is that of 1416: ordered by the duke of Milan to hand it back, Galeazzo da Correggio preferred to set it on fire rather than give it up intact. The war ended here too, on the twenty-ninth of April 1945, when units of the Italian Social Republic coming down from the Garfagnana surrendered their weapons to the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.