The name comes from charcoal. Here stretched the Sylva Carbonaria, an enormous forest that ran from the Terdoppio and Agogna streams to the Ticino and the Po, and that was set on fire in patches, on purpose, to get charcoal from it. Through the wood ran the Strada Regina, which from Piacenza led to Pavia and then on towards Vercelli, Turin and Gaul, and in the wood stayed the Lombard kings: in the Lombard diplomatic code there is a diploma of Cunipert, of about 690, signed not at Pavia but in curte Carbonaria, and another of Rachis dated 5 August 747 and issued from Curte Curbonaria. In 891 the emperor Guy of Spoleto assigned the Sylva Carbonaria to the Pavian monastery of Santa Maria Teodote.
The patron saint too is a charcoal burner. Saint Aldo was a hermit monk who spent the last years of his life in here, together with some brethren, reclaiming land, working at the charcoal pits and praying; his remains later went the round of the churches of Pavia. Around the eighth century the Columbanian monastery of Santa Maria di Carbonaria was founded in the same wood, which managed the production of charcoal and kept a hospice for pilgrims, beggars and the sick. Of the woods of those days a memory survives in the coat of arms, where there are two wolves recalling the ones that in the ninth and tenth centuries were numerous in these parts. The comune added «al Ticino» to its name in 1863; at the Casoni farmstead, in 1984, Il ragazzo di campagna was filmed.
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📅 Every year, on 27 December
On 27 December Carbonara al Ticino celebrates its patrons Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Aldo; every October the town hosts the Sagra della Bruschetta.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Carbonara al Ticino, but an easy day trip away.
