Cassolnovo

Cassolnovo is the northernmost town in the province of Pavia, and it looks to Vigevano rather than to its provincial capital: it lies in north-eastern Lomellina, borders the provinces of Novara and Milan and falls entirely inside the Lombard Ticino Valley park. The present municipality took shape in the early nineteenth century from Cassolnuovo, Villanova and Villareale; Villareale is the oldest of the three, the Cassolo that around 1360, when a second settlement called Cassolo Nuovo grew up nearby, ended up known as Cassolvecchio.

At Villanova, which in 1124 passed to the Vallombrosian monks of San Bartolomeo, the Sforza turned the decayed manor into a hunting estate that also ran the farming of the area: there, in 1470, taking advantage of the marshy ground, the first attempt to sow and harvest rice was made, and Ludovico il Moro later saw to the irrigation canals. Of the monks' church, rebuilt in the seventeenth century for the Gonzaga, the bell tower, an altar and a painting remain. Gaspare Campari was born here to a family of farmers; he learned the distiller's trade in Turin and in Novara devised the bitter that carries his name.