Torricella Verzate

The main village sits on a small limestone knoll in the middle of the valley, and it has the look of an islet. That may be exactly what the name says: a place called Isella, little island in Latin, is known from the Middle Ages, and Turris Isella would be the tower of the islet — the tower is still there, on a rocky spur, and they call it Torre Isella or Torre Saracena. The place-name appears as Turricella in the thirteenth century, and the arms adopted in 1997 put together the three things the village is: a tower for the name, the cross of Pavia for the province, ears of grain for the main crop.

Whose it was, though, is not altogether clear. In the hamlet of Verzate there stood a Templar house, Santa Maria del Verzario, which after the order was suppressed passed to the Hospitallers of Saint John and stayed with them until the Napoleonic period; some think it was the Templars themselves who made Torricella grow. Under Pavia from 1164, Torricella and Verzate belonged to the podesteria of Montalto, held in fief by the Belcredi. But in 1470 the hamlet of Bosco Madio was enfeoffed together with Corvino San Quirico to the Arcimboldi, and the later lords of Corvino, the Mezzabarba of Pavia, went on signing themselves counts of Corvino and Torricella: it is not known whether the territory was divided between the two fiefs along the Verzate stream or held jointly, and perhaps the two arrangements followed one another. Then, between 1928 and 1946, the comune was suppressed altogether and joined to Corvino San Quirico.