Vaprio d'Adda

Vaprio lies halfway between Milan and Bergamo, on the Milanese bank of the Adda, the river that draws the boundary, and the Martesana canal crosses it. The first document naming it, as Vapris, dates from 990; the name may be Celtic or Latin, from vadulum, a small ford, while an old legend traces it to aper, wild boar, since boars overran the land. Some scholars think the place began as a castrum around the year 300, when the first bridge over the Adda went up, the Pons Aureoli, named for the Roman general who ordered it.

Leonardo da Vinci stayed at Villa Melzi as government engineer in French-ruled Milan, studying how the waters were channelled, and here took Francesco Melzi as his favourite pupil. Between canal and river still stands the House of the Keeper of the Waters: seat of the toll and of the camparo who regulated the flow, and a halt for travellers awaiting the ferry or boarding the barges. The ferry was the only way across the Adda for four centuries, until mayor Cesare Castelbarco had a wooden bridge built. The arms sum it up: two blue bands for Adda and Martesana, two red for blood shed in the battles over the river crossing.