Abbiategrasso

The name means «Abbiate the fat». In a document of 1304 the place is called Habiate qui dicitur Grassus, and that grassus came from the valle grassa, the fat valley, that is the fertile valley on which the borough stood. The Visconti castle is of the fourteenth century, and through it passes a story that ends badly: Beatrice di Tenda, widow of the condottiero Facino Cane and then wife of the duke of Milan, often stayed there, until on the thirteenth of September 1418 she was taken from here to the castle of Binasco, where she was beheaded for treason. Later the Spanish had the castle demolished, since with gunpowder it was no use any more; but the demolition was only partial, and what was left became a noble house, returning to public use in the eighteen hundreds.

Where the Naviglio Grande bends towards Milan stood the office that mattered: from 1618 the canal's authorities sat here — the camparo, the commissioner and the water magistrate — and here the tolls were collected on the boats heading for the city. All of them, except those bearing the letters AUF, Ad Usum Fabricae, because they carried material for the building works of the Duomo: and from those letters, by a widespread explanation, comes the Italian phrase «a ufo», for free. The building is still there, waiting for someone to restore it. Not far off is the pronaos of Santa Maria Nuova, a monumental four-sided portico attributed to Bramante, among the most original pieces of Lombard Renaissance architecture; and there is the church the townspeople built on a vow made during the plague of the sixteen-thirties. The first cittaslow of Lombardy, Abbiategrasso cultivates its vocation: markets, frog and risotto taverns, bicycles along the towpath. The Ticino park begins at the edge of town.