Settala

Settala lies on the plain between the Adda and the Lambro, a short way east of Milan. The ground falls so gently that the eastern side sits lower, and in the Middle Ages that side was lapped by the outer marshes of Lake Gerundo, a body of water long gone. The water stayed: the town sits in the spring belt, and some of those resurgences lie within the regional park of the Muzzetta springs, tended with Rodano. Along the south-eastern boundary runs the Muzza canal, the oldest artificial channel of the Po plain, carrying Adda water to the fields. The name comes from the Latin saeptaria, from saeptum, an enclosure, for the fenced fields once here.

Roman beginnings are claimed for it: a road built under Tiberius has been unearthed, with a medal of the same emperor naming the duumvir Giulio Settala. In the Middle Ages it was a fief of the Settala counts, who took name and origin from this land and left the town their blazon: seven golden half-wings on red, beneath a golden chief with a crowned black eagle. They had the parish church of Sant'Ambrogio built, and at Cascina Castello the crenellated tower of a twelfth-century house still stands, a strongpoint of the Lombard League against Barbarossa. Caleppio and then Premenugo, taken in in 1869, enlarged the commune. Until the post-war years the settalesi were nicknamed i gambon de Setara: the old people say it meant not thick legs but good legs — good walkers.