Borgo San Giacomo

Until 1863 the village was called Gabiano, and its people are still called gabianesi. The old emblem was a set of canting arms: a cage with a rounded top, set on turned columns, with the word Gabianum written beneath it; it can still be seen on the baptismal font of 1577, in the parish church of San Giacomo Maggiore. The church of San Rocco, on the other hand, was begun in 1479, to fulfil a vow made during the plague.

Today's coat of arms, with the Visconti serpent, has an unorthodox history: the town council approved it in 1954, but two years later the heraldic office of the Presidency of the Council rejected it, on the grounds that it was not supported by sufficient historical research. The comune decided to adopt it anyway, and uses it still. Another thing they chose to keep here is the burial ground of the Sagrato, finished in 1778: a porticoed cloister with a chapel at its centre, closed in 1822 because of the Napoleonic law on burials and cared for ever since, because the village's own dead lie under it.