Gazoldo degli Ippoliti

Gazoldo can be entered from two sides only: from the west, by the provincial road coming from Piubega, and from north or south along the line of the via Postumia, the Roman road. The hamlet of San Fermo, on the other hand, is known for an oddity the roads do not explain: it is divided among three different municipalities. The name of the village is Lombard and comes from gahagium, the girdled, enclosed forest, that is a fenced piece of land under the Lombard system of tenure; with its final ending it would mean high forbidden wood.

The oldest document naming it is of 1215, in the Liber Potheris of the commune of Brescia, where lands ad Gazoltum in Mantuana are described: already then, in short, it was specified that the place lay beyond the border, in Mantuan territory. The second name is instead of the nineteenth century: from the original Gazzoldo it became in 1879 Gazoldo degli Ippoliti, after the local feudal lords. In one of their sixteenth-century residences, Villa Ippoliti, the museum of modern art has stood since 1980. Two thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants in the province of Mantua.