Cergnago appears in the tenth century as Cirniaco and in 1250 as Cergnagum, in the list of Pavian lands. Here a common error is worth correcting: the Lonati, whom some cite as feudal lords, only drew incomes in the village and never held the lordship; the fief went in the eighteenth century to the Lomellini of Carmagnola, and in 1743 Cergnago passed to the House of Savoy. It is also one of the few Italian comuni without a coat of arms: it has never adopted one, nor a gonfalon.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Cergnago took in a comune that had outlived its own monastery. The Vallombrosan abbey of San Pietro di Erbamara had been founded in 1170 by a donation from the lord Uberto de' Olevano, and its immunities made it a lordship and an autonomous comune; the monastery declined, was reduced to a commendam and suppressed perhaps in the seventeenth century, but the little comune of Erbamara went on existing until it was joined to Cergnago, probably in 1818. Of the parish church, burnt by French troops in 1658 and rebuilt in Baroque form, the bell tower fell in 1966 and was put back at once.
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📅 Every year, on 18 August
On 18 August Cergnago, a municipality of 754 inhabitants in the province of Pavia, celebrates its patroness Sant'Elena Imperatrice (Saint Helena the Empress).
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 Cergnago, but an easy day trip away.
