Romagnano Sesia

The name is Latin: in classical times there was here a fundus of the patrician family of the Romanii, the fundus Romanianus, and the suffix -anus in Latin marks possession. Until the unification of Italy it was called simply Romagnano; Sesia was added later, to keep it apart from Romagnano al Monte, in the province of Salerno.

On 30 April 1524 the battle of Romagnano was fought here, and near the oratory of San Martino di Breclema the French knight Bayard, of the challenge of Barletta, was wounded; some authors hold that he died there and was buried for a time in the Cantina dei Santi. That cellar is one of the few rooms left of the Benedictine abbey recorded in 1008, and it keeps fifteenth-century frescoes.