Bibbiano

The name most likely goes back to a Roman holding that took the name of the man those lands were assigned to, a Vibianus or Baebianus. The coat of arms says the rest: the upper half recalls that Roman origin, the lower half carries a dog and a bone, a pun on the Canossa, who from 1155 held Bibbiano within their fief of Bianello and only let go of it in 1757, when it passed to the marquises Gabbi. The church of Barco is named in a diploma of 781 and depended on the diocese of Parma until 1822.

What Bibbiano is known for, though, is cheese. The recipe — evening and morning milk, two cookings, rennet and salt, a whole year of ageing — is credited to the Benedictine monks of Corniano, and it was at Corniano, in a dependency of those monks, that the parchment of 1159 was drawn up in which the word formadio appears for the first time: three brothers from Carpineti took land on lease from the abbey of Marola in exchange for money, goods and three deliveries of cheese. The rest is agronomy: from the eighteenth century the fields moved from wheat and fallow to clover and lucerne, the five-year rotation became a three- and then a two-year one, more forage meant more milk, and the dairies multiplied. That is why most historians call Bibbiano the cradle of modern Parmigiano-Reggiano.