Acquanegra Cremonese

The name of this village is a marsh: aqua nigra, black water, dirty water. It was the water of the lake Gerundo, the great wetland formed by the overflowing waters of the Adda, the Po and the Serio, which occupied exactly the place where the village stands today. In the course of the centuries, partly through the work of man and partly through the natural change in the course of the rivers that fed it, that basin dried up, and only then could people settle. In 993 the place was defended by a wooden castle provided with ditches, and the first mention naming the village is of 999: Castrum Acquanigrae. Today the territory is flat and reclaimed, and of the black water nothing remains.

The position, however, had its price. The medieval documents say that Acquanegra was the seat of violent clashes between the armies of Milan and of Cremona in 1160; it was a fief first of the Pallavicino and then of the Cavalcabò; and in 1228, after a heavy defeat suffered in a battle between Cremonese and Milanese, the fortifications of the village were completely destroyed. The archives suffered too: many historical documents were lost in 1648, in a sack by the French. Being in the middle, on the other hand, has also given something: since the Napoleonic age a road has passed through here linking Milan, Cremona and Pavia — today downgraded to a provincial road, but with the same traffic as before — and the village has a railway station of its own on the Pavia-Cremona line, which handles both passengers and goods and serves the local feed mill with a siding of its own. The comune's coat of arms, which has never had a formal decree of concession, carries two silver swords crossed in saltire, with their points upwards.