San Bassano

San Bassano grew up on a crossing. The Strada Regina ran through here, the Roman road between Cremona and Milan, and all through the eleventh century the Serio flowed along the valley now called Serio Morto, the dead Serio: whoever had to ford the river came this way. After the year one thousand the village had pilgrims, a hospice attached to the little church of San Giacomo, merchants and armies; in 1157 the consuls of Cremona granted it the privileges of a free town, second only to those of Soncino, and in 1159 its castle sheltered the empress Beatrice of Burgundy while Barbarossa was besieging Crema.

Then the river went away, the castle was dismantled from the fifteenth century onwards, and nothing was left of the crossing. The coat of arms, adopted by the town council around 1960, records neither the ford nor the empress: it sets out a mulberry for the silkworms, a maize cob and an ear of wheat, and takes its yellow and red from the emblem of Lodi, the red cross on gold brought home from a crusade.