Graffignana

In 1176 Graffignana hosted a meeting of the members of the Lombard League, gathered to try to avoid a head-on clash with Barbarossa: it was the year of Legnano. The village, already inhabited in Roman times and the site in the Middle Ages of a river port on the Lambro, had come into the hands of the archbishop of Milan Ariberto d'Intimiano as a gift from the emperor Conrad II, and in 1034 Ariberto passed it on to the Church of Milan, tying it to Milan for good. On 6 October 1396 Gian Galeazzo Visconti placed it in the fief of San Colombano and granted it to the Certosa of Pavia.

The Carthusians stayed almost four centuries and reclaimed the land; they left in 1782, when Joseph II of Austria suppressed the order, and in 1785 the fief passed to the Barbiano di Belgioioso. What remains of those monks is the municipal coat of arms, which refers to the Gratiarum Cartusia and was granted by royal decree of 6 October 1927: the same day and the same month as the infeudation. In the Napoleonic period, between 1809 and 1816, Graffignana was a hamlet of Borghetto. Today its hills close the Lodi plain to the south, and the village has three products with a municipal denomination of origin: the Runchi biscuits made with chestnut flour, the Vittorina filzetta and the Vittorina cake, made with grapes.