The best MTB trails around Pontenure

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Place of historical, touristic, architectural and cultural interest Via Castello, 6, 29019 San Giorgio Piacentino PC

The castle was born as a medieval fortification in the Vezzeno Valley. The manor, surrounded by Guelph battlements, is defended by towers, the entrance one with a drawbridge and the mighty central keep. The Castle of Gropparello, known in ancient times as "Rocca di Cagnano", is a characteristic example of a medieval fortification built to defend the access route to a valley, conceived as a true eagle's nest overlooking the cliff, and therefore absolutely unassailable .. The oldest document known so far about Gropparello dates back to the year 810, and is the deed with which the emperor Charlemagne granted the place as a fief to the then bishop of Piacenza Giuliano II.

Traced route, sometimes fun single track among the trees, sometimes very wide dirt road

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The tower is linked to medieval events in the fiefdom of Olmeto (whose castle is not far away in the Chero valley below); and it was also the scene of war episodes during the last world war.

Olmeto Castle today preserves remains of the original structure: two lowered circular towers, traces of a drawbridge. In a niche on the façade of the ancient oratory there is a statue of the Virgin with child, a fifteenth-century artisan work, restored in 1713, now corroded by time. People attribute to them functions of protection against hail.

The church dates back to the 10th and 11th centuries. Restored in the 1960s and 1970s, recovering the original Romanesque architectural design with a gabled façade and a single portal. The oldest element is the apse which dates back to the 10th century and was built with bricks bonded together by thin layers of mortar. Inside there is a 16th century fresco which reproduces the Madonna della Neve, to whom the church is dedicated, and an icon from 1720 with the figure of Christ. The legend The nickname of Madonna della Neve is connected to the birth of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, during the first centuries of the history of the Church. Legend has it that under the pontificate of Pope Liberius (352-366) a rich Roman patrician named Giovanni and his wife, having no children, decided to offer their assets to the Holy Virgin for the construction of a church dedicated to her. The Madonna appeared to the two in a dream on the night between 4 and 5 August, indicating the place where the church was to be built. The Pope also had the same vision. All three went to the indicated place, the Esquiline Hill, and found it covered in snow in the middle of summer. According to local tradition, the Chiesuola di Sariano also preserves the dedication to the Madonna della Neve to remember the episode, similar to the Roman one, of a prodigious snowfall in the middle of August on the hills of Val Vezzeno.