Brallo di Pregola

The historic centre is not Brallo but Pregola, named as Predalia in a diploma of Otto the First in 972. From 1164, by a concession of Frederick Barbarossa, it was the Malaspina marquisate of Pregola, and from that grew a quarrel lasting centuries: the Empire held it to be an imperial fief, exempt from every other jurisdiction, while the duchy of Milan did not. When the Oltrepò passed to Savoy the question exploded: in 1743 Savoy pressed the last marquis, Baldassarre, threatening to confiscate his property, and the Empire went so far as to send garrison troops to prevent the marquisate ending up in Piedmont. Baldassarre and his son chose exile rather than give up their rights.

The map, meanwhile, kept moving. As part of the province of Bobbio the village passed in 1848 from Liguria to Piedmont, and in 1859 it entered the new province of Pavia, and so Lombardy. Only later did the new settlement of Brallo grow on the pass of the same name, and in 1958 the municipality took its present name. Today it is the southernmost point of Lombardy and contains the highest peak of the Oltrepò Pavese; in its territory there is also a ghost village, Rovaiolo Vecchio, abandoned and left standing.