Villanuova sul Clisi

The name of Villanuova sul Clisi is read in pieces: villa, because at the outset it was a small outlying quarter of Gavardo; nuova, new, because the village is a recent one; sul Clisi, from the river Chiese, which around here is also called by that name. In the beginning it was simply Villa, and the comune took its present name in 1862. The community really began to grow in the fifteenth century, when the Naviglio Bresciano allowed it to set mills and forges working, and in 1580 Carlo Borromeo made final the separation of its property from the pieve of Gavardo.

For centuries, though, the village could not manage to keep a bridge standing. Bridges were needed to link the built-up area to Valverde and Prandaglio, and they were built of timber; they were carried off by the floods, but also by the tree trunks that came down from the valley towards the plain floating on the Chiese itself. A lasting solution arrived only in the twentieth century. In 1917, with the front not far away, a camp for Austro-Hungarian prisoners was set up at Villanuova.