Urago d'Oglio

A little south of the village there is a hill that is not a hill. It was built with the bodies of the three thousand French soldiers who fell at the battle of Chiari: they were stacked up and then covered over with earth, and on top, in memory, a little church was raised that is called the Dead in the Field. It is an artificial rise in the middle of a flat plain, and anyone passing by without knowing notices nothing odd about it.

Three thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven inhabitants in the province of Brescia, on the left bank of the Oglio, opposite Calcio. On the afternoon of the twelfth of October 1427 the stronghold of Urago was taken by the Visconti captains Cristoforo Lavello and Alberico da Barbiano; in those same hours, at Maclodio, their commander Carlo Malatesta was being defeated by Carmagnola's Venetians. Realising they could not hold the town, the two left, but not before setting fire to the stronghold. The castle one sees today was built by the Martinengo in the fifteenth century; until the nineteenth it still had its moat, which could be flooded when needed.