Bosnasco

Bosnasco gives the comune its name, but the largest settlement is another one: Cardazzo, where more than half the inhabitants live. The place is known from the twelfth century, when Piacenza and Pavia both claimed it — Pavia had just been given dominion over the Oltrepò by imperial diploma — and the dispute was closed by arbitration, which assigned it to Pavia. Then it fell to the Beccaria and became part of the fief of Arena Po, which belonged to the branch of the family that took its name from Arena. At the beginning of the fifteenth century that branch fell out with the Visconti and had its main centre confiscated; but it managed to keep Bosnasco, and kept it until the line died out, in 1695. After that the place passed to the Busca, then to the Bellisomi and to the Corsi di Nizza, shortly before feudalism ended, in 1797.

Beside Bosnasco there was also another small comune, Sparano — also written Spariano — known from the tenth century, when it belonged in part to the monastery of San Colombano at Bobbio. In 1164 the emperor Frederick the first listed it among the places he placed under the jurisdiction of Pavia, and from that list the source draws the obvious conclusion: to be on such a list it must have been a place of some importance. It was suppressed in 1818 and joined to Bosnasco, and today it is a name. The comune lies on the hills of the Oltrepò Pavese, where they end and the plain begins, on the boundary with the province of Piacenza — the same city that had claimed it eight centuries earlier. The coat of arms was granted in 1954.