Sannazzaro de' Burgondi

Sannazzaro stands on the edge of the terrace that overlooks the valley of the Po, and it stands there for a precise reason: around 1600 a flood of the river destroyed much of the village, which gathered itself higher up, out of reach. The name comes from a cella Sancti Nazari mentioned around the year one thousand, a small monastic settlement from which the powerful Sannazzaro family came; the de' Burgondi, officially added in 1863, corresponds to the surname Bergonzi and is said to derive from Burgondo, the name of one of the family's four founders.

The passage to Savoy, in 1713, left a trace in the names of the hamlets: the Balossa that remained on this side of the border came to be called Balossa Savoia, while nearby Balossa Bigli stayed Austrian along with the Oltrepò. At the end of the nineteenth century a small power station was set up in the village, and Sannazzaro was the first comune in the province of Pavia to have all its streets lit. The refinery came much later, and in a few years turned a farming village into an industrial one.