Ponte dell'Olio

The place has belonged to the holdings of the basilica of Sant'Antonino of Piacenza since 418, and in the early Middle Ages a wooden bridge crossed the Nure here, which one passed by paying a toll. After the middle of the 12th century the pilgrims who went from northern Europe to Santiago came up the val Nure and passed through, when the village was still called Ponte Albarola: there was a little church of San Rocco kept by friars, with a hospitale attached that gave rest and care. The name that stuck, though, says the trade: in the first half of the 16th century six oil presses and several mills were working in the area, and along these roads passed olive oil, linen, soap, honey, orange peel, lamp oil, cheese, beans and sugar, besides the illegal export of Val Nure grain.

The bridges are the village's history. In 1324, after the fall of Alberto Scoto, the area went to Lancillotto Anguissola, and in 1414 his heirs received from Sigismund of Luxembourg the investiture of the castles of Vigolzone and Folignano, of the villa of Albarola, of Riva and Monte Santo; from 1567 it belonged to the Farnese, in the duchy of Parma and Piacenza. Growth stopped in 1817 with an epidemic of typhus. Between 1835 and 1836 a stone bridge for travellers was built, called after Maria Luigia of Austria, the duchess who had ordered it. In 1944 Allied bombing struck the station and brought down the railway viaduct over the Nure. And on the night of 14 to 15 September 2015 the Nure flooded: at Recesio a stretch of the old state road 654 collapsed, three people died, and the body of one of them, Luigi Agnelli, was found near the hamlet of Biana.