San Zenone al Po

San Zenone appears in the twelfth century as Sancto Zenono. It stands on the left bank of the Po, right where the Olona comes in, which crosses the village. It belonged to the Campagna Sottana of Pavia and, from the fifteenth century, to the district of the vicariate of Belgioioso. In the thirteen hundreds the castle belonged to the de da Codallo family and had a ricetto, that is the fortified enclosure in which the country people put themselves and their goods in safety when trouble came. The village is small and flat, all embankments and fields, and the river is the reason it is where it is.

At the end of the fifteenth century the fief went to Ercole d'Este, of the branch of the Este of San Martino, a cadet line of the ducal house of Ferrara. That branch died out in 1752 and in 1757 the fief passed to their heirs, the Barbiano princes of Belgioioso — the same family that held nearby Spessa. In 1863 the village added the river to its name. From 1938 it used, without its ever being officially recognised, a coat of arms with a mulberry tree laden with fruit: the mulberry fed the silkworms, and that was the money of this countryside. Here was born the journalist and writer Gianni Brera, and here were born the parents of the cook Gualtiero Marchesi.