For centuries the village was called only Vaprio: it is a document of 1178 that says «Casaletto» for the first time, and the second name came back at the end of the fifteenth century so as not to confuse it with the other Casaletto of the Crema area. The church of Saint George Martyr — a dedication that is usually a sign of Lombard antiquity — belonged to the Benedictines of Crema, who here did what they did everywhere: drain the land. Then, towards the end of the fifteenth century, it passed to the Benvenuti lords, who built their residence beside the bell tower.
And it was a Benvenuti who left the most lasting mark. On 19 November 1681 the twenty-three-year-old Giovanni Battista, egged on by his mother Giulia, waited outside the village for the parish priest Giuseppe Crotti, who was coming back unsuspecting from Quintano, and killed him with a shot from an arquebus: the priest had been rebuking that woman's conduct from the pulpit. The murderer later died fighting the Turks, in 1694. To make amends for the offence done to the parish, since then the priests of Casaletto hold the title of archpriest. The old church was deconsecrated when a new one was built between 1912 and 1914, and its frescoes were detached and sold to a collector: the comune bought them back in 2019 and put them exactly where they had been.
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📅 Every year, on 23 April
On 23 April Casaletto Vaprio, a municipality of 1,761 inhabitants in the province of Cremona, celebrates its patron Saint George, to whom the town's church is dedicated; the Parco Agricolo del Moso lies in its territory.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Casaletto Vaprio, but an easy day trip away.
