In 1414 the condottiero Cabrino Fondulo brought the emperor Sigismund to this village's castle, and with him were all three contenders for the papacy: Gregory XII, Benedict XIII and John XXIII. Three popes and an emperor in a tower of the Cremona lowland, on the eve of the council that was to put the Church back in order. In front of the same castle, shortly afterwards, the count of Carmagnola halted, not daring to attack the imperial armies. Things did not always go so well: between 1426 and 1427 the village was sacked and occupied by the Venetians, and again in 1509, in 1516 and in 1648.
The village used to be called Torre de' Malamberti, after the Cremonese family who owned these lands and who appear in the documents as early as 1278; the Picenardi arrived in the following century and stayed until the twentieth, so much so that on 1 January 1868, when four neighbouring municipalities were merged in, the name changed to Torre de' Picenardi. In 1866, after the battle of Custoza, the headquarters of the Italian army under general La Marmora were installed in the castle. The coat of arms, granted in 1967, has no heraldic symbols: it is a drawing of the façade of Villa Sommi Picenardi seen from the east. And the municipality is still growing: on 1 January 2019 it absorbed Ca' d'Andrea, after a referendum the year before.
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Near Torre de' Picenardi
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Torre de' Picenardi, but an easy day trip away.