Rottofreno

The municipal coat of arms carries the head of a grey horse with a broken bit, and it tells a legend: Hannibal, during the battle of the Trebbia, is said to have stopped in this village because his horse's bit had snapped. Scholarship says otherwise — the name comes from the Lombard roth-fridu, «friend of glory» or «of peace», and in the Middle Ages the village was called Rottofredo — but it is the popular explanation that the comune put on its emblem. The first mention, Locum et Castrum Rotofredo, dates from 996 and describes a farming settlement with a small fort.

The castle has a less than honourable story: in 1636 the Spanish laid siege to it and the castellan Cristoforo Ferrari handed it over to the besiegers, for which the ducal authorities condemned him to death for treason. The occupiers rebuilt the walls as an eight-pointed star, and of those walls nothing remains. Not far away, at the Castellazzo di Sotto, a young seminarian named Achille Ratti stayed in 1876, the future Pius XI; the same house was later frequented by the future John XXIII, then secretary to bishop Radini-Tedeschi.