Fara Gera d'Adda

The name is Lombard: a fara was a group of families bound by kinship, the unit on which that people's social and military order rested. King Authari settled his own fara here and had an Arian place of worship built, the Basilica autarena, so the site came to be called Fara Autarena. The rest of the name arrived late: until 1864 the comune was simply Fara, while Gera d'Adda means the gravel plain between the Adda and the Serio, from dialect gera, as Italian ghiaia comes from Latin glarea.

The basilica keeps its shell and a pulpit; deconsecrated since the sixteenth century, it served as a rehabilitation hospital during the First World War. The earliest documentary proof is a diploma of Charles the Fat of 883 naming a church dedicated to Saint Alexander in loco nuncupante Fara. The borders have a story too: in 1580 the Melzi family broke away and founded Massari de' Melzi, today the hamlet of Badalasco, which came back to Fara only after almost three hundred years.