Cornale e Bastida

Cornale e Bastida has 895 inhabitants in the plain of the Oltrepò, and it is a very young comune: it was born on 4 February 2014 from the merger of Cornale and Bastida de' Dossi, decided by the inhabitants in a referendum. The two names tell two different things. Cornale comes from the cornel tree, which is indeed on the coat of arms: canting arms. Bastida comes instead from the embankments raised against the floods of the Po, and it appears in 1452 as the bastion guarding the river crossing of the Dossi lords.

With the Po for a neighbour, geography here has never been a settled thing. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the river shifted further south, and the people of Bastida had to rebuild the village where it is now, in a safer position: before that it stood a good way further north. And the old comune was made of four separate pieces, two of them beyond the Po, in what is today the Lomellina — the four lozenges they put on their arms stood for exactly those four territories.