Belgioioso lies in the southern Pavia plain, a few kilometres from the left bank of the Po. In the fourteenth century the village was called Tabernellae; its castle, owned by a Pavia family, the de Cazabove, passed in 1376 to Galeazzo II Visconti, who rebuilt it as a hunting seat and named it Zoiosus, joyful, then Belzoiosus: the castle's name became the village's. In 1431 the fief went to Alberico II da Barbiano, and a branch of the house left its native Romagna to carry the Lombard title.
In 1525 Francis I of France, a Spanish prisoner after the battle of Pavia, stopped here briefly on his way to the fortress of Pizzighettone and then to Spain. The Barbiano di Belgioioso drew farmers and craftsmen around the castle and made the village proper; in 1769 they became princes, and that same year Maria Teresa of Austria granted them a mint here: it never opened, and the family's gold ongari and thalers were struck in Vienna. Towards the Po, the church of San Giacomo della Cerreta stands on the route of the Via Francigena, frescoed with votive paintings of Saint Roch and Saint James dressed as pilgrims; beside it lay Porcaria, a settlement named after pig farming that vanished during the fourteenth century.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Belgioioso celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel; in 1965 the town's Santa Cecilia band was conducted for a few minutes by Herbert von Karajan during an event at the University of Pavia.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
