Bornasco

The oldest village in Bornasco is not Bornasco: it is Settimo, which still carries in its name the seven miles that separated it from Pavia on the Roman road. Settimo was long the main centre, and its fief included Bornasco and Corbesate; it gave its name to the Vicariate of Settimo, which under the Visconti was placed under the direct jurisdiction of Milan — a Milanese salient driven into the Pavia countryside, and so it remained until 1756. Then Settimo declined: in 1841 it was suppressed and joined to Corbesate, and in 1872 Corbesate too ended up, together with Gualdrasco and Misano Olona, inside Bornasco. The old capital is now a hamlet of what had been one of its own lands.

Of the feudal past the castle remains, granted in 1396 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to Francesco Barbavara; in 1441 the vicariate passed to the condottiero Guido Torelli, whose descendants held it until the line died out, and then to the Mendoza and the Secco-Comneno. The parish church of the Beata Vergine Assunta was built in the early seventeenth century and took its present shape in the following one. The name of the village, on the other hand, seems to come from the dialect burnàsc, perhaps from a Latin personal name, Burrenus or Burnum. Today Bornasco is known across the Pavia country for a more prosaic reason: since 1974, on the Sunday after Easter, people come here for the frog festival.