Torre Pallavicina

This land on the right bank of the Oglio, where three provinces meet today, was once marsh: Paul the Deacon calls it Lago Gerundo. Then it became a battlefield, endlessly disputed between the Brescians, allied with Milan, and the Cremonese, allied with Bergamo; and since there were no fortifications of any kind, the population simply left to look for safer places. It was Bernabò Visconti who found it in that state and gave it to his wife Beatrice della Scala, with leave to sell it on: she broke it up among several buyers, and those buyers joined together to form the community known as the Condominio della Calciana, which became autonomous from Milan. The privileges were remarkable: no duties, rights of hunting and fishing, their own mills and workshops, and the tolls of the port of Urago.

Standing also on the watershed between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan, the Calciana was a true free zone, with no taxes to pay and an administration all its own. And as happens on every border, a great deal was smuggled across it, despite the severest laws and harsh penalties: for the local people it was one of the main ways of making a living. The tower that gives the village its name was raised by Tristano Sforza for the Barbò, as a lookout over the Oglio; beside it, later, the marquis Galeazzo Pallavicino built a palace and the irrigation canal that still crosses the built-up area. He married Elisabetta, Tristano's natural daughter, and with her he got the village, which has carried both names together ever since.