San Martino in Rio

At the end of the nineteenth century socialist ideas took root here among the poorest people, thanks to a few pioneers and above all to Arturo Bellelli, and around them a network of cooperatives and institutions was built: the Chamber of Labour and, first among the comuni of the Reggio area, a municipal labour exchange. Which means that work was no longer bargained for at dawn in the square, one man at a time: a public office assigned it. The town paid for that choice. On the thirteenth of November 1921 the communist Agide Barbieri was killed by a fascist who had come from Carpi; on the twenty-fifth of September the following year a local squad murdered the former socialist councillor Adolfo Vezzani. In the war of Liberation a strong partisan movement formed here, and it was the partisans who freed San Martino in Rio on the twenty-third of March 1945, more than a month before the neighbouring comuni.

At the centre stands a fortress that does not look like one. The castle was destroyed twice, by Barbarossa and then by the Gonzaga, and twice rebuilt with a moat, a drawbridge and two stout towers. It was held by the Roberti, a Frankish family enfeoffed by countess Matilda, who gave the town their own name until in 1420 they left everything and went back to Franconia. Then came a cadet branch of the Este, and the fief rose in rank until in the eighteenth century it became a principality of the Empire; when the line died out for want of male heirs, the Ducal Chamber leased the territory for three years, together with that of Campogalliano, to the widow of the last prince. The last feudal lord had the medieval castle disguised as an eighteenth-century palace, in rococo forms. In 1813 the fortress was bought by the community, which put the town hall and some dwellings inside it.