Fiorenzuola d'Arda has 14,886 inhabitants on the Via Emilia, and it is the most populous comune in the province of Piacenza after the provincial capital. In Roman times it was a mansio, a staging post on the road: it was called Florentia, and three different ancient sources — the Peutinger Table, the Antonine Itinerary and the silver cups of Vicarello — agree in placing it fifteen thousand paces from Piacenza. The name it bears today was born of a practical problem: in the eighth century the anonymous geographer of Ravenna called it Florentiola, the little Florentia, so as not to confuse it with the Etruscan one, that is, Florence.
The blackest day in its history has an exact date: 29 July 923, when on the plain around the town one of the bloodiest battles of the age was fought, between Berengar I, king of Italy and emperor, and Rudolf II of Burgundy, who was contesting his throne. Of the medieval village that grew up afterwards, around the pieve, the traces are in the street plan: the Castrum Vetus is mentioned in a parchment of 1248, and in 1341 the Visconti added a Castrum Novum on the Piacenza side, with walls and ditches. Of the towers of that time only one is left, and it has become the bell tower of the collegiate church.
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📅 Every year, on 17 October
On 17 October Fiorenzuola d'Arda celebrates its patron Saint Florentius of Tours; in the past the town had a different patron, Saint Boniface, celebrated on 20 August.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Fiorenzuola d'Arda, but an easy day trip away.
