Gabbioneta-Binanuova

Gabbioneta-Binanuova has 899 inhabitants in the Cremona countryside, and the hyphen in the name says it all: they are two villages that live together without ever really having merged. Each has its own parish church and its own oratory — at Gabbioneta the church of Sant'Ambrogio and the oratory of the Beata Vergine di Caravaggio, at Binanuova that of Santi Martino e Nicola and the oratory of the Beata Vergine del Patrocinio — and at Gabbioneta there is also the castle.

For sixty-six years the village had a tram. The Cremona-Ostiano line ran through here, and its story says a great deal about the Italy of the time: it opened on 2 February 1889 without either of its terminal stations, because the railway company would not allow a level crossing at Cremona and the Genio Civile had judged the bridge over the Oglio unfit to carry trams. So for almost three years the tram started just past a level crossing and stopped a hundred metres short of a bridge; the whole route could only be travelled from the end of 1891. In 1927 the track was taken off the road right around Gabbioneta, and the service ended in 1955, replaced by buses.