Rodengo Saiano

Rodengo Saiano stands in the Franciacorta. Rodengo would come from the Germanic personal name Hroding; for Saiano the theories pile up: the most accredited traces it to the Etruscan word Sejù, of unknown meaning; others think of Salian Franks, or of the Roman family Seia, whose names were read on a gravestone found in the hamlet. The two municipalities were merged in 1927, and the arms say so plainly: a blue cross on silver and, below, the letters R and S.

Towards the end of the eleventh century the abbey of San Nicola was founded at Rodengo, first named in a deed of gift of 1085: it lodged pilgrims on their way to Rome; around the fourteenth century it declined and was disputed between the monks and the prior Corradino Caprioli, and once the monks held full control they filled it with works by Foppa, Romanino, Moretto and Gambara. It also owned five mills along the channel that took its name from them, the Molinaria. The village tells how Charlemagne, unable to spend Christmas in the church of Saint Denis at Aachen, had one built here and called the area little France, hence Franciacorta: no document confirms it, and it is almost certainly false.