The name states the colour of the water: Aqua nigra, for the Chiese, which runs dark. The village lies in the north-western corner of the province of Mantua, two kilometres from the point where the Chiese flows into the Oglio, and it has a good many borders around it: to the east the Cavata and Tartarello streams, to the south the Cremona country, to the west the Chiese, to the north a watercourse and a small road. The speech feels it too: being Mantuan but once Brescian, and lying close to the Cremona country, the dialect here tastes of all three, with the Mantuan-Cremonese mixture prevailing.
The province, for that matter, changed not long ago: Acquanegra was a free commune in 1175, depended on the commandery of Asola from 1190 and remained under Brescia until 1451, then passing to the Gonzaga; at the birth of the Kingdom of Italy it was still Brescian, and only in 1868 was it assigned to Mantua. The coat of arms takes up that of the Benedictine abbey of San Tommaso, which drained these lands: the deep blue is the dark night, the golden glints the fertility of the soil. Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-six inhabitants.
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📅 Every year, on the third Sunday of October
Acquanegra sul Chiese celebrates Saint Fortunatus with the town festival on the third Sunday of October. In the hamlet of Mosio, the Mantuan painter Giulio Salvadori was born and lived.
White and yellow flour, almonds, butter and sugar, broken by hand: sbrisolona is Mantova's cake, already served at the Gonzaga court.
Read more →Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Acquanegra sul Chiese, but an easy day trip away.
