Siziano

Siziano lies on the plain between Milan and Pavia, cut in two by the Ticinello canal. Medieval documents call it Septezanum, later Seteciano, a name that points to a Roman estate: the property of a Septicio, a family name found on funerary inscriptions across the Po plain. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Milanese raised a castle here to guard their southern border; today it shows only from outside, since the inside was filled with earth and the village football pitch built on top. Metal cages hung from its towers, where prisoners were left to die: Pietro Visconti was shut in one by his cousin Matteo.

It was not always its own comune: in 1757 an Austrian edict made Gnignano the municipality and Siziano a hamlet of it, and the roles reversed only in 1863; soon after, Campomorto, till then a comune too, was absorbed. On the town arms, below the red castle, sits a silver millwheel taken from those of the Molinari, the last feudal lords. A medium-wave transmitter here carried Rai Radio 1, picked up at night across much of Europe; the plant's buildings now hold a data centre.