Caorso

There is a bear in the name and two leopards on the arms. Caorso is read as Caput Ursi, bear's head: it is not clear whether for the shape of the place or for images that showed one; the historian Andrea Corna prefers Ursilia instead, and a legend has the village founded in 820 by the two sisters of the bishop of Piacenza, Orsa and Imelde, so that the place would have been Cà dell'Orsa, later contracted into Caorso. According to the chronicler Giovanni Codagnello, in 1205 the men of Piacenza built a castle here to guard against attacks coming from Cremona; in 1214 the Cremonese occupied and destroyed the place, and in 1258 the fortress sheltered the troops of Oberto Pallavicino. On 7 April 1385 Gian Galeazzo Visconti gave the fief to Ottone Mandelli, of a family that had played a part in the capture of Bernabò Visconti, the duke's own uncle. The Mandelli stayed until 1827, when marquis Bernardino died and left everything he had to the Ospizi Civili.

On a floodplain near the hamlet of Zerbio stands the nuclear power station that was the largest in Italy. It began producing electricity in December 1981; in October 1986 production was stopped to reload the fuel, and after the referendums of 1987 it never started again: less than five years of work. The plant passed to SOGIN and is being dismantled. Long before, in 1522, the fortress had held against the siege of Francis I's French, who gave up because of the strength of the garrison; and Caorso carries the bronze medal for military valour for the partisan struggle. Since 2007 the region has recognised it as a Comune Turistico.