Until 1864 the municipality was called Santa Maria della Strada, after a village that no longer existed: the Po had destroyed it around 1800, the council seat was already at Travacò, and the old name went on appearing in the records out of pure administrative inertia. That is how things go here: the river draws the boundaries. Costa Caroliana lay in a deep bend of the Ticino, and when the river straightened its course the part left on the far bank was ceded in 1902 to Valle Salimbene. The Lebba farmstead at Mezzano, carried away by the Po, was likewise rebuilt somewhere else.
Four thousand three hundred and sixty-one inhabitants in the province of Pavia, on the island of land between the Ticino and the Po, just short of their confluence. In the seventeenth century there were no real settlements here but scattered farms and churches, divided among a handful of tiny communes, and it took a century and a half to reduce them to one. The Austrian customs house survives: when Pavia was Austrian and the Siccomario Piedmontese, the border ran two kilometres from the city, and the building still carries the imperial insignia. The parish church, of 1225, belongs to the last season of Pavian Romanesque.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Travacò Siccomario
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Travacò Siccomario, but an easy day trip away.