Canneto Pavese

Until 1885 this comune was called Montù de' Gabbi, and Canneto was only its parish. Montù stands for Monte Acuto — it was also said Montuè, that is Monte Acutello — and it was known already in the eleventh century; the comunal territory brings together several places that in the past each had their own autonomy: Canneto, Beria, Vigalone, Monteveneroso and Montù itself. Vigalone appears in the diploma of 1164 by which Frederick I granted Pavia predominance over the area, and in the list of Pavian lands of 1250 they are by now all there. Montù belonged to the Gabbi until the fifteenth century, then the power was probably usurped by the Beccaria, who joined it to the fief of Broni; in 1528 it came to the Valperga and in the following century to the Candiani of Pavia, later Rota Candiani. Canneto, seat of the parish, is found aggregated to Montù already in the seventeenth century; Biria and Vigalone were so before 1783, Monteveneroso only at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the end, the name of the church beat the name of the fief.

The castle that dominated the settlement of Montù, property of the Rota Candiani, was sold in the nineteen twenties and almost entirely demolished: today only a few ruins remain in the frazione of Montuè. In 1815 Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom, had been a guest there. The castle has stayed all the same in chief of the comune's shield, granted by decree of the President of the Republic of 16 May 1962, above a mulberry that stands for silkworm rearing and a vine that stands for wine, on green countryside. In 2017, beside the parish church of San Siro, a plaque was unveiled in memory of a fellow townsman, Ezio Sclavi, footballer of Lazio, of Juventus and of the national team.