Chignolo d'Isola

The Isola bergamasca, the tongue of land between the Brembo and the Adda, earned itself during the centuries of war between Milan and Venice a nickname that says everything: the triangle of hunger. Chignolo stood in the middle of it, with its castle on a knoll, disputed between Guelphs and Ghibellines and then between Visconti and Venetians, and the people paid for it for generations. With the consolidation of the Serenissima things improved: Chignolo was set at the head of the Quadra dell'isola together with Terno, and under the Austrians it became the chief town of the isola.

In 1928 its autonomy was revoked and the village was merged with neighbouring Madone under the name of Centrisola; the two split again in 1948. In the coat of arms is a mulberry tree, recalling the silkworms and the textile industry, a blue band for the streams of the Buliga and the Grandone and three ears of wheat for farming. Palazzo Roncalli, of the seventeenth century, is built on the ruins of the medieval castle that Venice had destroyed. Three thousand two hundred and fourteen inhabitants in the province of Bergamo.