Cona

Cona is a comune sparso, and the municipal seat is not in the village that gives the comune its name but in the hamlet of Pegolotte. It is an administrative detail, but it tells you how this land is made: the low plain between Padua and the lagoon, where the settlements are scattered and none of them ever grew big enough to be head of the others. The coat of arms too is very recent, granted only at the beginning of this century. Of the place's ancient affairs the sources tell almost nothing: the entries have their history sections empty, and what is left to read are the buildings.

The churches, in fact, say more than the documents. Three of the hamlets each have their own parish church, and each belongs to a different century. The one at Cona was rebuilt in 1909 on the basis of the earlier one, which was of the fifteenth century. The one at Foresto is of 1662, and it is a notable example of a rural religious building, with a fine bell tower standing beside it; it was thoroughly restored and reopened in September 2009. The church of Cantarana, finally, was built in 1705 and became a parish church in 1718, while the bell tower arrived only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Three parishes for fewer than three thousand inhabitants: the churches are older than the comune, and every village kept its own.