San Giorgio Bigarello

The comune was created on 1 January 2019 by merging San Giorgio di Mantova and Bigarello, and its seat lies in neither of the two places that name it: it is at Mottella. A first referendum had failed, the yes vote carrying only in San Giorgio; the second passed on both sides. The older name comes from a fortified borough on the eastern shore of the Mantua lakes, guarding the bridge into the city; it was levelled to make room for newer fortifications, and since some hamlets passed to Mantua the ground it stood on lies outside the municipal boundary.

What survives of it is the rocca di Sparafucile, named after a character in Verdi's Rigoletto. In 2007, during the excavation of a Roman villa at Valdaro, two Neolithic skeletons came to light buried face to face, locked in an embrace that takes in the legs as well: the only double burial known in northern Italy, now shown at the national archaeological museum in Mantua.