Predosa

In 1450 Filippo Spinola took Predosa for Monferrato and made it an outpost from which to disturb the trade between Alessandria and Milan. Besieged, he held out in the castle, and the failure cost the Genoese their appetite: from there relations between the Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Milan began to sour. Spinola, lured by a trick to the duke's court, vanished in circumstances never explained.

The hill of Castelferro has belonged to the commune only since the twentieth century. There in 1712 the Monte della farina was set up to hold back usury; and in 1629 the plague had cut the inhabitants to little more than four hundred, half of what they had been.