Vigonovo

This village has two names, one on top of the other. Anciently it was called Sarmazza, and that is where the first settlement stood: a Paleoveneto necropolis of the third century before Christ says so. Shortly afterwards the Romans traced the via Annia, which ran from Padua to Aquileia touching today's Tombelle and Sarmazza; in the fourth century the area was evangelised and the first Christian place of worship rose on the remains of a Roman stronghold, dedicated to the Most Holy Saviour. The name seems to point back to the Sarmatians, the barbarian people who invaded Italy in the middle of the fifth century: it is supposed that the horde arrived along the via Annia itself, devastated Sarmazza and forced the inhabitants to take refuge on the islands of the lagoon. Towards the end of the sixth century, the danger past, they came back and rebuilt: and the rebuilt village was called Vigonovo, the new village.

The old name, however, did not die: the new church, dedicated to the Assumption, went on for a long time bearing the title of Santa Maria di Sarmazza di Vigonovo, and it was a mother pieve on which chapels scattered between Camin and Lova depended. In 874 the place name Sarmazza is attested for the first time; at the beginning of the tenth century the Hungarian raids devastated the area again and definitively destroyed the church of San Salvatore; and only in 1035 does the first document appear citing Vigonovo. Much later, under the Lombardo-Veneto administration, the Brenta was diverted towards Chioggia and today's Naviglio was formed, to answer the floods and the silting up of the lagoon but also to give work. Today Sarmazza is the name of the river park astride the Brenta and the Padua-Venice waterway, opened in 1997.