Vailate

At Vailate every spring has a name of its own. This is the resurgence belt, where groundwater comes out of the soil unaided, and over the centuries those who worked the fields christened each individual spring-pool: Fontana Bianca, Fontana Betta, Fontana Bugì, Fontana Burlengo, Fontana dei Buchi, Fontana delle Guardie, Fontana Monighèt, the Fontanone dei Dossi. They are not monuments and nobody visits them, but they are the reason why this plain, between ninety-five and one hundred and eight metres above sea level, could sustain centuries of cattle sheds and water meadows.

Four thousand four hundred and sixty inhabitants in the province of Cremona, on the border with the Bergamo province, in the Gera d'Adda. The old centre keeps the vaguely circular shape of the fortified village it once was: the walls had eight towers and were demolished in 1834, and only fragments of them survive, absorbed into the houses. The parish church of Saints Peter and Paul was rebuilt in neoclassical form between 1842 and 1849 by the architect Giacomo Moraglia, with a portico of four columns, and it holds a Serassi organ of 1849 and several canvases by Attilio Assandri, a painter and patriot born here.