Sant'Angelo Lodigiano

The saint in the name seems to have neither church nor monument here: the reference is to the archangel Michael, much venerated by the Lombards, who returns on the town arms, azure, with the angel in majesty in a silver cuirass and leather tunic, wings lowered, beside a red house. The settlement first appears between the tenth and eleventh centuries among the holdings of the abbey of Santa Cristina di Olona, and by the early twelfth century it headed a pieve. Lodigiano was added in 1864, to avoid confusion with the many places of the same name; locals are santangiolini, and also barasini.

The castle on the Lambro was raised by the Milanese to control the river, and wanted above all by Regina della Scala, wife of Bernabò Visconti. In 1452 the borough was enfeoffed to Matteo Bolognini, arms prefect at Pavia, who obtained from Francesco Sforza the honour of adding Attendolo, the Sforza founder's name, to his own. Under Spanish rule tax collection was split three ways: part to the Bolognini, part to the marchioness Talenti-Fiorenza, part to the so-called commune of the poor. In the eighteenth century Giacomo Casanova stayed in the castle and described its decay; restored, it now holds the bread museum and the Lombard museum of farming history. Francesca Cabrini was born here in 1850.