The name says that nothing grew here: zerbo, gerbo, gerbido is the word by which in Lombardy uncultivated land was meant, and this, near the left bank of the Po, was scrub, waste and marsh. In the oldest documents one reads Gerbo, Gerbi, Villa Gerbidi, and the place turns out to be a possession of the Lombard royal court of Corteolona and of the monastery of Sant'Agata in Pavia, one of the first in Christian Lombardy, founded in 672 by king Perctarit. On 8 June 1187 pope Urban III confirmed to Sybilia, abbess of Sant'Agata, certain goods among which «Jerbum», with two chapels: one of Saint Martin, the other of Saint Donninus. Much later, by a diploma of king Charles II of Spain of 7 April 1683, the marquis Pio Ghislieri became lord of Zerbo and of Torre Selvatica, which in the eighteenth century was joined to the comune; in 1771 the fief passed to the counts Gallarati-Scotti.
Then there is the day the village filled up. In June 1972, on the banks of the Po, Zerbo hosted the second Festival di Re Nudo, organised by the magazine of that name: about ten thousand young people arrived, peacefully invaded a village of a few hundred inhabitants and camped along the river. Among them was a very young Eugenio Finardi. It was one of those things that happen only once and stay in the memory of everyone who was there, on one side and on the other. Since then Zerbo has gone back to being a quiet village of the floodplain; the last crowd it saw pass was on 22 May 2019, when the eleventh stage of the Giro d'Italia came through.
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📅 Every year, on the third Sunday of May and on 29 June
Zerbo, a municipality of 445 inhabitants in the province of Pavia, celebrates its patron Saint Peter on the third Sunday of May and on 29 June.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Zerbo, but an easy day trip away.
