Stradella

Stradella lies in the Oltrepò Pavese, at the mouth of the Val Versa, where the Apennines reach their northernmost point and press so near the Po that the plain narrows into a corridor, the stretta di Stradella. In the Middle Ages its story merges with that of Montalino, the neighbouring hill under the bishop's fortress: both lay under the temporal lordship of the bishops of Pavia, and the town appears as Stratella in 1029. The bishop, count of Stradella, granted the Tuesday market in 1220 and communal statutes in 1419.

The accordion arrived with Mariano Dallapè, from Cavedine, who built one of the first here in 1876; others followed, and between the wars twelve hundred of the town's ten thousand people worked on the instrument. Almost every workshop has closed, but the accordion museum in Palazzo Garibaldi keeps that first prototype. The civic tower survives because, when the lower fortress came down to make room for the market square, it was spared and ended up carrying the belfry of the parish church, whose own bell tower had collapsed.