Brescello

Brescello was founded by the Cenomani Gauls around the seventh century before Christ, and it carried its name over from their capital, Brixia, that is Brescia: a Celtic root meaning height, hill, stronghold. The Romans renamed it Brixellum and made it one of the most important centres of the Po plain, because of its position on the river; and it was here, in 69, that the emperor Otho killed himself. Then the town fell, and fell far: towards the end of the fourth century Saint Ambrose called it the corpse of a city. Despite that, in 389 Brescello was proclaimed a bishop's see, and the first bishop, San Genesio, is still the patron of the place. Around 584 the town, held by the Byzantines under the orders of the Lombard general Droctulf, was besieged by the troops of king Authari: the besieged escaped the massacre by a sudden sortie, but the town was razed, and when the Byzantines took it back they destroyed what was left of it.

It was born again all the same, and in 1479 Ludovico il Moro ceded it to the duke of Ferrara, Ercole I d'Este, in exchange for Castelnuovo di Tortona: a town swapped for a town. So began the Este domination, and in 1555 duke Alfonso II had Brescello fortified with a very strong pentagonal wall, because it stood exactly on the border between the duchy of Ferrara, that of Parma and Piacenza and that of Mantua. In 1702, during the war of the Spanish succession, the fortress was sacked by Franco-Spanish troops, and the following year the fortifications were dismantled: on the comune's arms that fortress is still there, but on the ground it has been gone for three centuries. In 1951 came the great flood of the Po. And today Brescello is known for another reason again: it is the village of the Don Camillo and Peppone films, taken from the stories of Giovannino Guareschi, and in the former monastery of San Benedetto there is the museum that gathers the props. From here come the spongata, the Christmas cake filled with jam, pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, spices and honey; and at Colmar, in Alsace, they still tell that the pretzel was first made by a baker born in Brescello, who moved there after the Thirty Years' War, to honour his home town.