Food0grafia En: Tales from the "Bassa" (Flatland)

We had a look at the cuisine of the flatland zones around the Reno river near Bologna, today we continue instead the trip alongside the river banks, tasting the unique landscapes of these zones.

When I traveled there the river was flooding due to the snow and rain falling in those days and so I had the pretty scarce opportunity to have a glimpse at how this zone looked in the past when drainages and land reclamations weren't so diffused.

Sala Bolognese Bagno di Piano tumbledown bridge

This was pretty evident when, leaving the borough of Calderara di Reno, we enter the one of Sala Bolognese, near the hamlet of Padulle and then crossing the river at Bagno di Piano where, beside the new road bridge, lies the old brick bridge, built at the end of the XIX century, and now tumbled down.

Following the road we arrive at the town of Castello d'Argile that, as its name implies, was a castle built in medieval times by the commune of Bologna to control this zone that bordered with the lands controlled by the House of Este that ruled Ferrara. Its origin is pretty evident nowadays still with the two castle gates now incorporated into civil buildings that follow the old castle walls perimeter.

Leaving Castello d'Argile and following the right bank of the Reno River we can find another historic town: Pieve di Cento.

The town, together with its "sister" Cento that lies on the opposite bank of the Reno river, were built around the XI century when the first fortifications were raised around the principal hamlets of the zone but its origin could be at least two century older according to some documents. Separated by the river but politically a whole, the two town were splitted in 1376 by the bishop of Bologna so to sanction the control of that city on this important strategical location on the Reno river. During those years its Rocca (fortress) was elevated under the direction of Antonio di Vincenzo, the same architect who planned the construction of San Petronio Basilica in Bologna.
A tradition coming from medieval times is the "Partecipanza" which is a collective contract between the bishop of Bologna and some families in which land would perpetually be redistributed every twenty years among the male heirs in exchange of drainage and other reclamation works. It was an institution useful to attract fresh agricultural workers to otherwise uncultivated marshy lands but it sill exists today from the XII century and the last redistribution happened in 1999 within those same families that still have respected the duty to live into the borough.