According to tradition, the puppet Guignol comes from here. In the mid-sixteenth century Francis I of France was recruiting Piedmontese and Lombard weavers to set up his silk works at Lyon, and among them, the story goes, were men from Chignolo, who brought along puppets with wooden heads to make merry after work: the French called them les chignoles. Much later, from 1808, Laurent Mourguet gave body and name to a character already familiar in the booths of Lyon. In 1981 the council named its largest square after Guignol, celebrating the puppet's return from Lyon with a French delegation, and it is twinned with Brindas.
Three thousand nine hundred and ninety-two inhabitants in the province of Pavia, on a raised strip of land where the Lambro enters the Po — hence the name, which means a point of land between the rivers. In 990 Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, on his way back from Rome, noted the abbey of Santa Cristina with its castle as the fortieth stage of his journey along the Via Francigena. In 1466 duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza had the course of the Po straightened: ten years of work that gave the village wider land, safer from floods.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Chignolo Po
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Chignolo Po, but an easy day trip away.