HISTORY

Medole lies at the foot of the Morainic amphitheatre, on gently sloping land. 

The village probably owes its name to a gravel deposit geologically called “medolo” that extended to the north of the village and had been used since ancient times. 

The area was certainly inhabited in the period of imperial Rome, as witnessed by two tombstones found near the Pieve (parish church). In medieval times the village is first referred to as “vicus” (village or neighbourhood) in a document of 814, then as “castrum” (fort) in 1020, the period of the development of the Medieval Communes around the ancient castle. 

In the period of Seigniories, Ezzelino da Romano, the House of Visconti, the Scaligers (The Scala family), the Visconti family again, and perhaps Venice, followed one another up to 1404, when Medole was placed under the sovereignty of the Dukes of Gonzaga of Mantua until 1602, year of its assignment to the cadet branch of Castiglione delle Stiviere. 

During the Aloisian phase, Medole was awarded the title of marquisate, which the village held until 1701, when the land went back to the Gonzaga family for the following six years before being subjected to the Habsburg Empire. 

The historic role of this site is also worth remembering, first in the course of Napoleon’s Italian campaign and later on, in June 1859, during the Risorgimento, when the second great battle for Italian independence was fought, mainly in the northern flatland near Monte Medolano (Mount Medolano). 

 

Medole – via Roma