Rivarolo Mantovano

Until 1907 the village was called Rivarolo Fuori, and the name comes from the Latin ripula, little bank: the bank of a watercourse now gone, the Ripa d'Adda, around whose pieve the first settlement stood, a kilometre further to the south-west. That vanished water has stayed in the coat of arms, which illustrates a local legend: a big fish saves a warrior from the battle and carries him back to the bank on its own back. In 1432 the emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg sanctioned the lordship of the Gonzaga, which lasted more than three centuries, and the village's present shape was the will of Vespasiano Gonzaga, duke of Sabbioneta, who drew its plan.

The result is a chessboard old town, closed in a rectangle of walls with three gates, where hardly any building rises above the others: the exceptions all stand on the square, the old Piazza Grande now Piazza Finzi, with the Palazzo Pretorio, the palace of the counts Penci and the long arcades. On 25 March 1512 the Franciscan Sisto Locatelli, a native of the place, founded here a Monte di Pietà against usury, recognised by Vespasiano Gonzaga in 1552 and closed at the end of the eighteenth century. And on 8 February 2000 Yad Vashem named Margherita Beduschi Zanchi Righteous Among the Nations: during the German occupation, after the arrest and deportation of the only Jewish family in the village, the Foa, she had protected Jewish friends from Brescia with the help of don Primo Mazzolari, parish priest of Bozzolo.