Gonzaga

Gonzaga is the village that gave a dynasty its name: from here came the Corradi da Gonzaga, from whom descended the family that held the lordship of Mantua from 1328 to 1707. The castrum appears in a document of 967 recording its passage from the monastery of San Benedetto di Leno to Adalberto Atto of Canossa. As for the name, the Gonzaga historian Gaspare Scioppio traced gunzo to a Germanic word for green and pleasant.

Once lords, the Corradi rebuilt the castle with seven towers and Ghibelline merlons, and Ludovico II added a palace by Luca Fancelli, in whose rooms Andrea Mantegna painted Petrarch's Triumphs. In 1717, ten years after the Gonzaga state ended, the castle was dismantled and its stones went into the churches of Polesine and Bondeno and into a few farmhouses; two towers were left standing and served as prisons throughout the nineteenth century. On the night of 19 to 20 December 1944 the village saw the only urban battle fought by the Resistance in the Po plain that winter: Alcide Garagnani died there, awarded the gold medal for military valour, and the reprisal condemned seven partisans rounded up near Poggio Rusco.