Sala Baganza

The story of Sala Baganza is that of two marriages arranged to make peace and both ending in an assault. In 1322 Vannina Sanvitale was given in marriage to Andreasio de' Rossi to placate the enemy family: a few months later, on 19 September, it was he who attacked and destroyed the fortification of Sala and set fire to the villages of Sala and Maiatico. Her father Gianquirico was arrested in Parma and displayed in a cage beside the tower of the town hall, and got out only in 1326, on condition that he leave the city. A hundred and thirty years later they tried again: in 1454 Giberto III Sanvitale married Donella de' Rossi, daughter of count Pier Maria, «in the hope of pacifying relations between the two families». In 1482 it was Pier Maria who sent troops against Sala, where his daughter had been left alone because her husband was away at war: on 22 August the soldiers filled the castle moat with faggots and set up the ladders.

The name, fortunately, tells quieter things. «Sala», by the most accepted hypothesis, comes from Lombardic and meant the smallest unit into which a landed estate was organised for collecting dues from the peasants; others have proposed the Etruscan zal, «six», for the six miles from Parma, or the Latin salarius, the salt with which meat is cured. «Baganza» was added only in 1862, from the torrent, to tell the village apart from its many namesakes. Sala appears for the first time on 20 November 995, in a donation by bishop Sigifredo II to the Chapter of the cathedral of Parma; the tower of San Lorenzo, named in 1141, was turned into a castle after 1477, when Giberto was made first count of Sala, and later became the hunting residence of the dukes of Parma. Today the territory means prosciutto, parmesan and Malvasia, and to the northwest lies the park of the Boschi di Carrega.