Sant'Ilario d'Enza

The village was called Sant'Eulalia, after its parish church, and it changed its name because of a hospice: the Hospitale Sancti Hilarii, one of the shelters opened along the Via Emilia for the pilgrims who travelled it. The new name already appears in the Chronica of the Franciscan Salimbene in 1233, but no official document recorded it until 1714. The specification «d'Enza» is more recent still: the town council added it in 1862, at the request of the governor of Emilia, to tell the village apart from its namesakes scattered across Italy.

From the passage of the Germanic peoples there remains the tomb of Mavarta, a reused Roman gravestone carved in barbarian characters, datable between 487 and 510. The coat of arms, by contrast, tells a story of uncertain continuity: adopted in 1860 by copying a stamp kept in the town hall, it changed shape several times over the following decades, and the only element that survived every version was a pair of putti. Not until 1992 was the design fixed by decree.