Boffalora sopra Ticino

Boffalora was born out of a building site. The first permanent settlement documented on this spot dates from 1180, during the digging of the Naviglio Grande: it was probably the standing camp of the workers who were cutting the canal, and when the work was done the people stayed, because the place was a good one — the water of the Ticino, the woods, the fertile fields and the right distance, halfway between Milan and Novara. The canal that gave rise to it still cuts it in two, upper Boffalora and lower Boffalora, and stitching them together is a granite bridge built in 1603 and restored in 2003 for its four hundredth birthday.

Four thousand one hundred and ninety-five inhabitants on the western edge of the metropolitan city of Milan, partly inside the Lombard park of the Ticino valley. On the first of November 1245 the communal militias led by Gregorio da Montelongo defeated the forces of Frederick II here, preventing them from crossing the canal and marching on Milan. Nobody is sure about the name: some trace it to an early medieval chieftain called Wulfhari, some to the dialect phrase for «the wind blows», some to the late Latin for buffalo country, from when all this was marsh.