Lugagnano Val d'Arda

The village is dominated by the badlands of monte Giogo, which erosion has carved out of blue marly clays of Pliocene age. In those clays are the fossils, because these hills were once the bottom of the sea: in 1983, at Rio Carbonari, the fossil skull of a rorqual came to light, nearly complete and about two metres long, which today is in the geological museum of Castell'Arquato. Since 1995 part of the territory has been the geological reserve of the Piacenzian, the geological stage that takes its name from Piacenza. The name of the village, instead, comes from Lucus Anneianus, the sacred wood of Anneius or of the Anani Gauls who lived here, and appears in a document of 884 in the form Lucanuiiano.

In the comune's territory, though, there is also a Roman city. Veleia, founded by the Veleiates and then peacefully drawn into Rome's orbit, became a municipium and the chief place of an Apennine area stretching between the Trebbia and the Taro; people stayed there willingly, also for the thermal waters. The decline began at the end of the third century, because of the landslides that kept sliding and of the crisis that concentrated the land in few hands. Then the city vanished, and it was found again by chance: in 1747, in a meadow in front of the church of Sant'Antonino, the tabula alimentaria traianea turned up, a great bronze inscription of Trajan's time, and from that find the excavations began in 1760. That bronze also names the farms around, and some can still be recognised: the fundus Pollianus is Polignano, Antoniano is Antognano, the fundus Virianus is Variano. In 1862 the comune added Val d'Arda to its name.