Sommo

Sommo stands at the eastern end of the Lomellina, on a kind of narrow peninsula formed by the terrace of the upper plain, which looks down on the flood bed of the Po. From 849, by donation of the emperor Lothair I, it belonged to the bishop of Pavia, and the bishop also owned Pancarana on the other bank: he thus controlled one of the main crossing points of the river, because the road from Pavia to Voghera and hence to Genoa ran through here. Sommo became the seat of a squadra, that is a podesteria taking in many of the nearby places, and the bishop's table probably kept the high lordship over it until fiefs were abolished, in 1797.

Beside the village, though, something happened that rarely turns up in administrative papers. In 1713 the Lomellina passed to the Savoy while the neighbouring Siccomario stayed with the duchy of Milan, ceded to Austria. Four small territories, San Fedele, Travedo, Torre de' Torti and Campomaggiore, had been sold together with Cava, which was in the Lomellina, but administratively they counted as Siccomario: neither of the two powers would give them up, and the dispute lasted so long that for twenty-five years those four lands remained without a master, becoming a refuge for outlaws. They were assigned to the Savoy only in 1738 and made into a single municipality, San Fedele con Travedo, which in 1818 was united to Sommo.