Villanova del Ghebbo

The name of this village has changed three times, and each time because of the water or of whoever was in charge. The first documents are of 727, when the inhabitants built the little church of San Zenone at the locality of Valdentro and the settlement was called Villa San Zenone. Then a ruinous breach carried the Adige out of its bed and opened a new one, that of the Adigetto, and with the Adige the church went too: it was rebuilt on the left of the new watercourse in 1077. In 1198 the men of Ferrara gave the territory over to those of Verona, who put a castle on it at the locality of Gazzo, or Ghebbo, from the name of a channel nearby; and by the name of Gazzo the comune was called until the sixteenth century, when it became for good Villanova del Ghebbo. The castle, meanwhile, was taken by the Mantuans, and in 1245 it was destroyed by Ezzelino III da Romano, then podestà of Verona.

At villa Monti, a farm complex made of the manor house, the labourers' house and the stables, Giovanni and Giacomo Monti were born. They were arrested between the end of 1818 and the beginning of 1819 with the group of the carbonari of Fratta Polesine — the best known was count Antonio Fortunato Oroboni — for conspiracy against the Austrian empire, and tried at Venice: the sentence is of 23 December 1821. Giovanni was condemned to death, the penalty at once commuted to six years in prison, which he served at Ljubljana; Giacomo to six months, because the evidence against him was light. In all the death sentences were thirteen, all commuted, and among those condemned were Oroboni and Francesco Villa, who died at the Spielberg — the prison Silvio Pellico told of in «Le mie prigioni». A tablet in the town hall, unveiled for the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification, recalls the two brothers, and the baptism records in the parish archive document that they were born here.