Here the Po narrowed, and so here people crossed. The place was called Portum Peducolosum, and it is attested from Roman times: according to Livy it was from here that in 218 BC Hannibal, after the battle of the Ticinus, crossed the river towards Stradella. Of the second famous crossing we even know the time of day: the late afternoon of Saturday 18 July 929, when the abbot Gerlanno carried by boat to the other bank the chest holding the body of Saint Columbanus, in procession from Bobbio to Pavia, to reclaim the abbey's possessions in the Oltrepò. Then, towards the twelfth century, the ford and the port moved to Parpanese, and Portalbera was left behind.
In 943 the kings of Italy Hugh and Lothar gave the village to the episcopal see of Pavia, together with Stradella, Rovescala and Cecima; and from then on the bishop of Pavia had not only the lordship but almost all the ownership of the land, until the end of the eighteenth century. It was a bishop, Pietro Grassi, who gave Portalbera its municipal statutes, in 1459. Beside it there was another, tiny comune: Portalberella, today the hamlet of San Pietro, enfeoffed in 1677 to the Mandelli counts and abolished in 1818.
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Near Portalbera
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Portalbera, but an easy day trip away.