Arzago d'Adda

At Arzago the newly elected podestà had to embrace a column. It was a broken Roman column, and while he held it tight he pronounced the formula of the oath: he promised, in substance, to be as upright and firm as that stone. The broken column ended up in the municipal arms, beside the tower of the castle of the de Capitani, who held feudal power from 1030 and who after centuries saw their manor turned into a country inn; during the restoration, at the back, their coat of arms came to light again.

Roman things have come out of the ground here in quantity. In 1817 a peasant loading manure struck a terracotta container full of coins minted under Antoninus Pius: about 150 pounds of copper coins, a couple of hundred small silver ones and others besides. The people rushed up at the news and the whole treasure disappeared; in the years that followed, they say, everyone dug everywhere hoping to find another. Until 1929 the village was called simply Arsago. Two thousand seven hundred and sixty inhabitants in the province of Bergamo.