Castel Bolognese

Castel Bolognese has a birth certificate, a rare thing for a town: the notarial deed founding it is dated the thirteenth of April 1389. Bologna needed a garrison where the via Emilia crosses the Senio, in the middle of territory disputed with Faenza and Forlì, and the Faentines destroyed it more than once; so in 1388 the Senate decided to build a proper walled settlement there. The fortress came in 1391 and the houses filled with porticoes, in imitation of the mother city. In 1501 Cesare Borgia stormed the place and had fortress and walls pulled down.

The position produced a side effect nobody had foreseen. A Bolognese enclave in the territory of Ravenna, the town enjoyed favourable customs duties, and in the sixteenth century it became a convenient stop for smugglers of salt and grain heading for Tuscany. In 1794 pope Pius VI settled the matter in the simplest way: he detached Castel Bolognese from the Legation of Bologna and assigned it to that of Romagna. With the border gone, the privilege went too. The civic tower, the town's emblem, was instead blown up by the retreating Germans in 1945 and has never been rebuilt.