Casaloldo

The territory of Casaloldo is entirely flat, and the only rise to be found in the village is not natural: it is the mound of the old centre, that is what remains of the earthwork of the ancient castle. In front of it runs the Tartaro-Fabrezza, the little stream that once fed the moat. The municipality is in the province of Mantua, but until the middle of the nineteenth century it belonged to the Brescia country, and the boundary between the two provinces ran exactly between Casaloldo and Piubega: one on this side and one on that. The way people speak here still shows it.

In the Middle Ages the village was ruled by the counts Casalodi, then it entered a minor district with Asola as its capital, which stayed three hundred and fifty years under the Republic of Venice. Today the plain around is farming and stock-rearing country, but the village works at something else too: it belongs to the hosiery district of Castel Goffredo, where women's stockings are made. Two thousand six hundred and twenty-one inhabitants in the province of Mantua, in the Alto Mantovano, a few kilometres from the borders with Brescia and Cremona.