Pastrengo

On 30 April 1848 a battle was fought here, and it is remembered for one thing alone: the charge of three squadrons of Royal Carabinieri, who had been given that day the protection of king Carlo Alberto. The king had pushed forward onto the field with a dozen of them as escort, and near Monte Valena found himself suddenly under Austrian fire. The charge that followed decided the battle: the Savoy units, bogged down in marshy ground and held up by the enemy's resistance, were galvanised by the sight of nearly three hundred horsemen setting off at the gallop with drawn sabres. It has remained the founding memory of the corps, and in the comune's arms there are two crossed swords to recall it, and a star for the valour shown.

The same arms tell the rest as well. The three hills stand for Pastrengo, Pol and Piovezzano, the three territories joined in 1818 to form the comune; and on the middle hill there is a shepherd, because the name is Lombard, Pastrengum, a place of meadows and pastures. From the early Middle Ages this land was the property of the monastery of San Zeno of Verona, and it kept feudal rights and privileges until 1797, when the Venetian Republic fell. Then the Austrians came back to fight here, and in the middle of the eighteen hundreds they had four forts built on these hills, equipped well enough to stand a long occupation; they stayed in service until the early nineteen hundreds. The comune measures nine square kilometres, among the smallest of the province, and in 2011 it was given the title of city.