The name comes from the Latin flexus, the bend of a river: the Barzaga, one of the minor branches of the Po, made a sharp curve exactly where the centre stands today. The second half of the name, by contrast, is a decision taken unanimously by the town council on the thirtieth of March 1867, to honour prince Umberto of Savoy. The boundaries too were decided from outside: after the war of salt, in 1484, the peace of Bagnolo cut the village in two and the victorious Venetians set the border on the Poazzo drain, leaving San Donato to Ferrara; the parish stayed in the Ferrarese diocese until 1818.
Of the marshes that once covered this land the Gorghe di via Traversagno remain, where wild birds stop to nest. The water came back, though: on the fourteenth of November 1951, during the flood of the Polesine, a lorry carrying evacuees overturned at Frassinelle and was dragged by the current all the way here. Fiesso ended up counting eighty-four dead, out of the hundred and one officially recorded in the whole flood: the village that, by chance, paid the highest price.
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📅 Every year, on 8 September, with the fair lasting about ten days
Fiesso Umbertiano celebrates the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 September with a fair lasting about ten days, once a wood and livestock market.
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 Fiesso Umbertiano, but an easy day trip away.
