Cavriago

Cavriago first appears in a document of 996, by which countess Rolenda, illegitimate daughter of king Hugh of Italy, gave the castle and chapel of Corviaco to a certain Paulone. In the age of the communes the village was cut in two by the border between Reggio and Parma, which ran along the Rio di Cavriago, the stream that still crosses the built-up area: what remains of that division is the hardest thing to erase, namely two churches, San Terenziano always under the diocese of Reggio and San Nicolò under that of Parma. Frontier ground, the village became the favourite haunt of the brigands of both lordships, and from that comes the saying still repeated today: at Cavriago they plant beans and thieves come up.

In 1482, tired of Este taxes, the people of Cavriago handed themselves over to Guido Torelli of Montechiarugolo, who had just sacked Montecchio. The punishment was decided unanimously: on the fourteenth of April 1486 the castle was brought down by cannon fire, and then a thousand Ferrarese sappers razed every building in the village, day after day; the few houses left standing were renamed Villa Nova, to wipe out the memory of the traitors. Of the castle two towers remain, unrecognisable after so many restorations. On the first of May 1921, during the workers' day celebrations, a fascist squad fired on the demonstrators and killed the Catholic Stefano Barilli and the anarchist Primo Francescotti; in April 1945 Australian bombing raids on the German command killed fourteen people. Cavriago holds one of the very few monuments to Lenin in western Europe.