Oliva Gessi

Oliva Gessi lies on the hills of the Oltrepò Pavese and owes the second half of its name to the gypsum deposits of the Gessi district, worked for centuries. The first half is far older: in 972 the emperor Otto I gave Oliva to his daughter-in-law Theophanu, the Byzantine princess, and it was she who passed it to the Pavia monastery of Santa Maria delle Cacce. The monastery held these lands for a long time, then came the Isimbardi, who owned the castle and about two thirds of the municipal territory.

At the end of the nineteenth century the estate was bought by the De Benedetti family of Turin: Abramo De Benedetti was awarded the silver medal at the Italian General Exhibition of 1884 for the exemplary way he ran it, and his son Ugo, who had inherited it, was seized by the Germans in 1943 and died at Auschwitz. The village is also the birthplace of Luigi Versiglia, bishop and martyr, whose family kept the salt and tobacco licence here, the only shop in the place: the house where he was born is now a museum. And there is one record that raises a smile: the village theatre, with its hundred seats in a village of a little over a hundred and fifty people, is the largest in Europe in proportion to the population.