Gadesco-Pieve Delmona

The name is a hyphen: Gadesco and Pieve Delmona were two comuni, and in 1929 they became one. The town hall, though, is in neither of them: it is at Cà de' Mari, a third hamlet, together with the primary school, the cemetery, the gym and the park. It is a scattered comune, with no real centre, and each piece has kept its own feast: at Gadesco the sagra of San Luigi Gonzaga in September, at Pieve Delmona those of San Lucio in July and of San Rocco in mid-August, at San Marino the feast of the Madonna della Cintura.

The countryside around produces milk, maize, soya, beef, barley and wheat, and in recent years an industrial area has been added. The most interesting thing, though, is that two small biogas power stations burn the slurry from the cattle sheds and local biomass, and produce electricity for four hundred families: about half the comune.