Cortemaggiore

Cortemaggiore is a town drawn on a table to be a capital. It was founded in 1479 by marquis Gian Ludovico Pallavicino, who wanted a city for his small state, and wanted it as fine as those of the great lordships: the plan is by the architect Maffeo Vegio of Como, who followed the schemes of Leon Battista Alberti's ideal city — streets at right angles to one another, set on the cardo and decumanus of an old Roman camp, and fronts never higher than the width of the street, so that the avenues should always be lit and well aired. The main street was given wide porticoes for walking under cover. The founder had called it Castrum Laurum, but that name lasted a very short time: people went on saying Curtis Major, because it was the chief place of the Contado Aucense. Of the ring of walls with its four gates and of the great fortress nothing is left: the Napoleonic government pulled them down for building material.

Independence lasted a little more than a century and ended in 1586, with the death, childless, of the last marquis. Meanwhile, in 1545, marquis Gerolamo Pallavicino had created a ghetto with the synagogue at its centre: of the Jewish community, which lived here until the end of the nineteenth century, nothing is recognisable in the town any more, except the small cemetery along via Morlenzo. Then, for centuries, Cortemaggiore stayed what it was, a farming place, until 1949, when Enrico Mattei found oil in its fields. The field was a modest one, but from that crude came the only petrol refined from oil out of the Italian subsoil: it was called Supercortemaggiore, and it was for it that the six-legged dog trademark was invented.