Zavattarello

Zavattarello sits at 525 meters on a ridge in the Alta Val Tidone, the Oltrepò Pavese stretch where the Apennines slope down toward the Po. The name derives from the vulgar Latin savattarellum, the place where savatte, slippers, were made. The fortress towers over the medieval borgo below, and the two read as one composition: stone village and stone stronghold, the lane climbing through covered passages toward the walls that once enclosed the whole community.

The Apennine setting, midway between the Po plain and the Ligurian Sea, gives Zavattarello one of the more dramatic positions among the Borghi più belli of Lombardy. A place named for slippers grew into a seat of counts and a captain of Milan, and what remains is the relation between the two: the working village at the foot of the ridge, and the fortress that governed it, still standing above.