In the flat Lomellina the bell tower of San Giorgio can be seen from kilometres away: seventy-six metres, completed in 1767, and the symbol of the village more than anything else. The settlement probably began as a dependency of a Benedictine monastery, in the vanished locality of Monticello, then outgrew the monastery and acquired a castle. By 1250 it is already among the domains of Pavia. But the real reason for its importance is administrative: the dukes made it the seat of the Captain of the Lomellina, what Casteggio was for the Oltrepò.
Hence an oddity: the feudal lords follow one another fast, Giovanni Simonetta in 1477, Pietro Birago in 1483, and others after them, as though nobody was meant to stay long enough to take root. The place mattered too much for the dukes to leave it long in the same hands. In 1581 San Giorgio appears on the map of the Duchy of Milan painted in the Gallery of Maps of the Vatican Palaces. The marquisate came in 1687 with Ercole Visconti and ended in 1724, when his nephew Galeazzo died of smallpox: the following year the fief was taken back by the state and nobody received it again.
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📅 Every year, on 23 April
On 23 April San Giorgio di Lomellina, a municipality of 1,155 inhabitants in the province of Pavia, celebrates its patron Saint George; the Fiera del Drago (Dragon Fair) is dedicated to the saint.
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 San Giorgio di Lomellina, but an easy day trip away.
