Pumenengo

For centuries Pumenengo was almost a state of its own. In 1366 the village entered the possessions of Regina della Scala, wife of Bernabò Visconti, who had an irrigation channel dug and wrung from her husband exemption from taxes to the Lordship of Milan; then, between 1380 and 1382, she sold Calcio to the Secco, Torre Pallavicina to the Cropelli and Pumenengo to the Barbò, laying down that the lords of the three villages must always decide by common agreement. This is the «Condominio della Calciana»: a free zone on the line between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan, exempt from taxes and from obligations to the central state, where smuggling was one of the main means of living. It ended with Napoleon, who revoked every privilege.

The castle tells the same story as the ground it stands on. It rises on a terrace made by the Oglio, and that is why it does not have the square plan with a tower at each corner of the lowland castles: it is trapezoidal, and the towers are three. The keep, to the north-west, served for a time as a prison and was reached by an outside stair; to the north-east there is an open, rotated tower, of the kind used in the thirteenth century. The moat and the ravelin remain, while the drawbridge has been a fixed bridge for centuries. The Barbò lived there almost without interruption until the twentieth century.