Borgoratto Mormorolo

The name holds together two old and distinct settlements: the borgo, where the town hall stands today, and Mormorola, which from the thirteenth century onwards means the pieve, heir of an even older farming estate of Bobbio called Memoriola. The oldest place in the comune, however, is another: Zébedo, mentioned in 1164 in the diploma by which Frederick I granted Pavia dominion over the Oltrepò. That name marks a settlement of Gepids, the Germanic people who came here in Lombard times, in the sixth century, and in the same diploma the place called Illibardi also appears. Since the days of the Lombards the territory belonged to the possessions of the abbey of San Colombano of Bobbio, and the pieve of Mormorola, which belonged to the diocese of Piacenza, had many nearby parishes under it: in this corner of hills the religious weight was far greater than the civil one.

In civil matters, indeed, Borgoratto was subject to the fief of Fortunago and until the eighteenth century was not even a comune of its own: it followed the fortunes of Fortunago, passing from the Dal Verme to the Riario, then to the Botta, who made it a marquisate, and in 1546 to the Malaspina. It became a separate comune in the eighteenth century, first under the name of Valle di Borgoratto. Then the round of provinces began: in 1743, by the treaty of Worms, it was united with the Bobbio country to the Kingdom of Sardinia and entered the province of Bobbio; in the Napoleonic age it was annexed to France; in 1818 it passed to the province of Voghera and in 1859 to that of Pavia. The double name is of 1863 — and some observe that Borgoratto Mormorola, like the pieve, would have been more correct. On the arms are the marquis's crown of the Malaspina, the crozier recalling Bobbio, and then a bunch of grapes and an ox: the vine and the cattle, which here have always been the bread.