Trovo

The village lies in the north-western Pavese, not far from the left bank of the Ticino, and its names can be followed backwards through the documents: Trovo was Trodum in the twelfth century, while Papiago — the comune merged into it in 1872, after being suppressed — was Paplaum in the twelfth century and Papiagum in the fifteenth. Trovo belonged to the squadra, that is the podesteria, of Marcignago, and later to the fief of Trivolzio, which in the seventeen hundreds was held by the Grugni Rusca. The parish church is dedicated to saint Blaise; the municipal coat of arms was granted in 1985.

Both villages lay in the Campagna Soprana, a term that needs explaining: it was one of the four great divisions of the Principality of Pavia, the northernmost, closed between the province of Milan to the north, the vicariate of Settimo to the east, the city to the south and the Ticino to the west. The Spanish government, newly installed in Lombardy, had encouraged its birth along with the other local bodies on one precise condition: that they undertake to collect the taxes on Spain's behalf. The Campagna Soprana was divided into four delegations, each of which sent a deputy to the Congregazione del Principato, the provincial council of the day, and named one of the four sindaci of the executive. With few changes, that way of representing the countryside lasted two centuries.