Oppidum Piceleonis
Viscontean fortifications in Pizzighettone

Pizzighettone, May 10^th and 11^th, 2008

What: medieval and Renaissance fortifications.
Where: Pizzighettone (Cremona, Italy).
How: thematic itinerary.
When: May 10^th and 11^th, 2008.

Pizzighettone (Cremona, Italy).
Castle.
Tower of the Ford [Torre del Guado] or Torrione.
2007.
Digital filing (2007-00260).

Castles, strongholds and walls bring us back to the past: they symbolize and evoke it again to our mind, because they’re evidences which pass through centuries, outliving who ‘made’ the history. In our every-day life we often see these edifices: we pass by them, sometimes we live next. But – for the most disparate reasons – we usually pay not much attention to them.

On Saturday 10^th and Sunday 11^th May 2008, in Pizzighettone (Cremona) it has been proposed a thematic itinerary – entitled Oppidum Piceleonis. Viscontean fortifications in Pizzighettone (Oppidum Piceleonis. Fortificazioni viscontee a Pizzighettone) – based on the fortifications the Visconti family of Milan made built between XIV and XV Century.

The lords of Milan in the late Middle Age and the early Renaissance provided to convert Pizzighettone – village on the Adda River, among Cremona, Lodi and Piacenza – in a fortified bridge-head which was due to defend and control the Cremonese and the lower course of the river: a strategic stronghold, indeed a regular «war-town», fortified with towers, town-walls, castle and rocchette. Even if absorbed inside successive restorations and transformations – the place stayed active till the XIX Century, beyond the Italian Unity – the Viscontean buildings make the still today recognizable foundation of one of principal garrisons at one time existing in Lombardy and in the Po Plain.

The undertaking Oppidum Piceleonis. Viscontean fortifications in Pizzighettone has let ‘discover’ these evidences very interesting for history and architecture: the Tower of the Ford [Torre del Guado] or Torrione, the remains of the Castle, the Bastion of the Becco [Bastione del Becco], the northern town walls, the Ravelin [Rivellino] and Cremona Gate [Porta Cremona]. Structures around which various personages alternate themselves for decades: from more-known, as the Viscontean lords – the sanguine Bernabò or the suspicious Philip Mary, for example – to less-known, as castellans, soldiers, local or neighbour inhabitants. From here it has come out a complex ‘world’ – very similar to ours and yet very different – which the Viscontean buildings ‘witnessed’ or even ‘led’: in short, evidences of history, not simple bricks.

It has been up to Davide Tansini to illustrate this articulate and fascinating context. In facts, the undertaking has gone beyond a simple architecture description: it has also been an itinerary through events, society, culture and ‘curiosities’. A bit as «go back to the origins» of the reality we know, meant in ambit not closely local, but wider: Lombardy as geographical, historical, social and economical entity which taken shape during centuries, and whose the ancient fortifications of Pizzighettone are an important ‘stage’.

And just from here the value of the undertaking Oppidum Piceleonis. Viscontean fortifications in Pizzighettone has come out: a course by which reliving and understanding the history.

Pizzighettone (Cremona, Italy).
Fortifications on the Adda River.
2005.
Digital filing (2005-00557).

• Organization: Associazione Culturale Nebbie del Drago of Castiglione d’Adda (Lodi), in collaboration with the Gruppo Volontari Mura of Pizzighettone.

• Leading: Davide Tansini, historian and studious of fortified and military architecture, associated of the Istituto Italiano dei Castelli and of the Istituto per la Storia dell’Arte Lombarda.
  

Download the release (PDF format)

Oppidum Piceleonis. Viscontean fortifications in Pizzighettone [Oppidum Piceleonis. Fortificazioni viscontee a Pizzighettone].
Thematic itinerary.
2008.
Handbill.

Davide Tansini’s contacts:

• mobile (+39) 349 2203693;

• e-mail davide@tansini.it.