Provaglio Val Sabbia

Provaglio Val Sabbia has 966 inhabitants in the Val Sabbia, and its history has one peculiarity: no fortification was ever built here. Since the early Middle Ages the village has identified itself with its pieve, the Plebs Provalei Inferioris, dedicated to Saints Quiricus and Giuditta, whose jurisdiction reached as far as Pavone Chiese. On the mountains, since Roman times, silver and copper ores were mined; the mines closed in the sixteenth century, when richer deposits were found elsewhere.

The sanctuary of the Madonna delle Cornelle was born of a story of ash trees: some children saw a beam of light settle on a tree and found there a tablet with the Virgin and Child. They carried it to the church, but the next day it was gone: it had returned to the ash, and so it did every time. So they built the sanctuary there, and in 1611 added the bell tower. The comune as it is today was born in 1928, joining Provaglio Sopra and Provaglio Sotto. On 5 March 1945 at Cesane the Black Brigades shot ten partisans of the seventh Matteotti brigade, among them the Belgian Pierre Lanoy.