The name comes from the Lombard gahagi, which means wood, and this land was already inhabited in the fourth millennium before Christ. In Roman times there were important villages here, because the territory lay on the via Claudia Augusta which climbed from Ostiglia to Verona along the Tartaro: the carved stones of those centuries can still be seen built into the walls around the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, that of San Pietro in Valle — which people call the Ceson — and the former parish church of Correzzo. With the fall of the empire the place emptied and the marshes took the fields back, until around the eighth century the Benedictines began to drain them. Of that watery world one story remains: tradition holds that on the night of Pentecost you can hear the bell tower of Carpanea ringing, a city sunk since time out of mind in a marshy stretch of the Tartaro, and that those tolls drive away bad luck and chase the devil. The municipal coat of arms is watery too: a seated man — Neptune, or a river god — with a trident and a jar from which a river pours, flanked by a green reed bed.
The fief, held by the Benedictines, passed in 1307 to Federico della Scala and then to the Dal Verme, among them that Jacopo who was a great condottiero and lord of Bobbio and the Val Tidone as well; in 1437 Venice confiscated all their Venetian fiefs because of their definitive alliance with Milan. In 1867 the comune changed its name from Gazzo to Gazzo Veronese, and in 1928 it absorbed the suppressed comune of Correzzo, moving the town hall to Roncanova because it stands in the middle of the territory. From the middle of 1944 count Luigi Perez and his wife Sandra sheltered here a young Jew from Merano, Moshe Shapiro, forced by the round-ups to leave a first hiding place at Sustinente: presented as a servant under the false name of Mario, he stayed in their house until the Liberation, in April 1945, and was then able to join the Jewish Brigade. On 2 August 1999 Yad Vashem in Jerusalem gave the Perez couple the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Since 1951 the town has lost almost a third of its people, from the eight thousand seven hundred of that year to little more than five thousand.
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📅 Every year, on 5 August; late May to early June brings the ancient Sagra di Gazzo
Gazzo Veronese celebrates Saint Tarcisius on 5 August. Between late May and early June, the ancient Sagra di Gazzo is held, at Villa Parolin, where the museum exceptionally opens its doors.
Eight points, powdered sugar like snow on a mountain: pandoro was born in Verona in 1894, patented by Domenico Melegatti.
Read more →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 Gazzo Veronese, but an easy day trip away.
