Binasco grew along the road from Milan to Pavia, and may owe its name to that halfway position: one explanation traces it to the Latin bini, «double», the village lying at equal distance from the Milanese and Pavian fiefs, then divided by an artificial channel, the fossatum later renamed Ticinello. The likelier derivation is the Latin estate name Benanu with the Celto-Ligurian suffix -ascus. A fort is recorded here in 1129, in a bull of bishop Bernardo; the town is administratively Milanese, its parish part of the diocese of Pavia.
The castle grew under the Visconti and became the personal fief of Filippo Maria, who often withdrew there: on the night of 13 to 14 September 1418 he had his wife Beatrice di Tenda, widow of Facino Cane, beheaded on a false charge so as to marry Agnese del Maino; her page Michele Orombello died with her, and from that story Vincenzo Bellini drew an opera, libretto by Felice Romani. On 24 and 25 May 1796 the town, risen against the French, was burned and sacked in reprisal, and many arrested villagers were killed. What stands of the castle, which also appears on the municipal arms, was rebuilt between the late sixteenth and late eighteenth century.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Binasco
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
