Castel d'Azzano

Until a century ago there was a lake here. It was called the lake of Vacaldo, it was fed by springs — fourteen hectares of clean water that renewed itself — and it shaped the history of the village until it was drained. It served as a reservoir for the surrounding fields, its water was granted to the people of Vigasio for irrigation and to turn the Molino Nuovo, and it was also a hunting reserve a few kilometres from Verona, with a castle that made it possible to move the court here in summer. In 1164 Frederick Barbarossa made use of it: camped near Vigasio, without allies and with every comune against him, he used the lake, its canals and its floodable ditches as a passive defence, replacing with water the walls he did not have.

The lake reached the First World War in an altered state, then it was abandoned and reduced to a bog; in the same period villa Violini Nogarola, rebuilt at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Ticinese architect Simone Cantoni, was being wrecked by its use as a military prison for prisoners of war. Today that villa is the town hall: it has belonged to the comune since 1997. The counts, for that matter, administered the comune in person: after the annexation to Italy count Antonio Nogarola, the last heir of the house, was mayor until 1889, and was succeeded until 1917 by count Ludovico Violini Nogarola, who had inherited the title as well. The village's name, on the other hand, comes from an Attius, a very common Latin name.