Comun Nuovo

In 1238 eleven families who had left Bergamo settled in a place called Prato Novo, south of Zanica, and everything else followed from that — including the name, which means exactly what it looks like. The village grew, fortified itself to stay out of the Guelph and Ghibelline wars, and ended up right in the middle of them: fallen under the Ghibelline Suardi, it suffered in 1379 a Guelph attack that left nineteen dead and houses burned, and in 1404, after the kidnapping of two Ghibellines made the village switch sides, it was burned by the Ghibellines themselves with the help of the condottiero Jacopo Dal Verme. The story goes that on that occasion twelve children who had taken refuge in the castle tower threw themselves down to escape the flames.

Four thousand one hundred and sixty-three inhabitants in the province of Bergamo, on the lower plain crossed by the Morla stream. Of the Suardi castle only traces remain, but the Ghibelline tower is still standing and serves as the bell tower of the parish church of San Salvatore, which holds inside an altarpiece by Giovan Battista Moroni. In 2010 the council also gave itself a logo for unofficial use: a stave with the opening notes of the Ode to Joy bent into a C above an N, and the words commune of Europe.