Ricengo

The sanctuary of Santa Maria del Cantuello stands inside the cemetery of Ricengo, a little more than a kilometre north of the village, and it is worth the detour: recently restored, it holds frescoes that nobody would expect in a country graveyard. A Madonna del latte dated 1474, a Madonna della Sapienza from between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, other Madonnas with Child from the fifteenth, and on the apse altar a sixteenth-century antependium with Christ between Saint Pantaleon and Saint Roch.

The rest of the village is made of villas, and of what is left of the villas. In the centre there is villa Ghisetti Giavarina; in the frazione of Bottaiano there was instead the villa Obizza, of the Obizzi family, and today it is gone: it collapsed. All around, the provincial roads of the Crema plain tie Bottaiano to Pianengo, to Casaletto di Sopra, to Camisano — a knot of short crossings from one village to the next, which is after all the way this countryside has always been held together.