The Adda cuts Pizzighettone in two: the main village on the east bank, the hamlet of Gera on the west. The Serio Morto skirts it too, what is left of an old bed of the Serio that until the late Middle Ages ended here. The ford mattered before the Romans: the Celtic stronghold of Acerrae dates from the third century BC, then a staging post on a branch of the Roman road from Mediolanum to Placentia. Today's village was planned from scratch: in the twelfth century Cremona set a castrum here, on the road to Pavia and Lodi.
It stayed a fortress for centuries. In 1525 Francis I of France was shut up here, taken by the Habsburgs after his defeat at Pavia: the tower called del Guado, which held him, still stands. The Austrians later cut bombproof barrel-vaulted casemates into the walls; those on the north side became in 1785 the first ergastolo in Lombardy — then just the word for a state prison — and as a military gaol were so feared that "I'll send you to Pizzighettone" was a threat among soldiers. The arms are per fess azure and argent, a wingless griffin, motto "Pice Leon".
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 19 January, with shaved grana cheese tasted at the beans-and-pork-rind feast
Pizzighettone celebrates Saint Bassianus on 19 January. The other hamlets have their own patrons: Saint Roch in Gera, Saint Patrick in Regona and the Blessed Virgin of Roggione in Roggione.
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 Pizzighettone, but an easy day trip away.
