The village changed bank without moving an inch. It had been born on the right bank of the Serio, when the river ran further east; between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries the Serio shifted west, and the houses found themselves on the left bank. The old abandoned bed is now called the Serio Morto, the dead Serio, and the two channels have cut into the plain, leaving two valleys with clearly visible edges. To the south it is the Adda that has done the digging, in an area once covered by Lake Gerundo. In April 1933, digging the embankments of the Serio Morto, the remains of several pile dwellings came to light a few metres down: no metal objects, so stone or bronze age, as at Chieve and Ombriano.
This strip of land was long a fault line, with Cremona on one side and Milan and Crema on the other. On 5 June 1139, at the Motta di Ripalta Arpina, a very bloody battle was fought which ended with the Cremonese army largely taken prisoner: maxima pars populi Cremonae fuit capta, writes the chronicle of Sicardo. In those days the village was called Rivoltella, and its parish church is very old: a chapel is mentioned as early as 1041, and in a deed of August 1051 the capella S. Mariae in curte Rivaltellae appears. A document of 1134 lists 54 places that depended on it.
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📅 Every year, on 15 August
On 15 August Ripalta Arpina, a municipality of 1,055 inhabitants in the province of Cremona, celebrates its patroness Santa Maria Assunta (Assumption of Mary).
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 Ripalta Arpina, but an easy day trip away.
