Varsi

Varsi sits in the val Ceno, at the foot of Monte Dosso, and it holds a rare documentary dowry: eleven Lombard parchments, datable between 735 and 774 and kept in the Chapter Archive of Piacenza, which name its parish church of San Pietro and the hamlets around it — some still inhabited, like Vianino and Golaso, others gone for centuries. The name is older still: the alimentary Table of Veleia lists the saltus praediaque Varisto, the woods and farms of Varisto, which is the Roman form of Varsi.

The castle was built by the diocese of Piacenza around the tenth century, and thereafter changed hands constantly: in 1303 bishop Ugo Pelosi swapped it away to the Scotti, then came the Fieschi, the Malaspina, the Sforza, and in the eighteenth century the counts Rugarli, who held the fief until Napoleon abolished feudal rights. The keep's north tower served as the church's bell tower until 1926. Curious is the small lake north-east of the village: in 1724 it was drained and put under the plough, but after some thirty years the outflow channel clogged and the water took the hollow back, where it still lies.