San Giovanni in Persiceto

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Comune di San Giovanni in Persiceto
Municipal coat of arms
Country	Italy
Region	Emilia-Romagna
Province	Bologna (BO)
Mayor	Paola Marani (since June 2004)
Elevation	21 m
Area	114 km²
Population
- Total	25,115
- Density	210/km²
Time zone	CET, UTC+1
Coordinates	44°38′N 11°11′E
Gentilic	Persicetani
Dialing code	051
Postal code	40017
Frazioni	San Matteo della Decima, Le Budrie, Castagnolo, Zenerigolo, Lorenzatico, Amola
Patron	St. John the Baptist
- Day	June 24
Website: www.comunepersiceto.it

San Giovanni in Persiceto is a town and commune in the province of Bologna, northern Italy.

[edit] History

The territory of San Giovanni in Persiceto had been populated since Prehistory: on the basis of the classical tradition and its toponymy the stance of Gaulish communities are maintained to be taken for sure. Later, it was occupied by the Romans.

Historic sources do not mention the area in the late Roman period: perhaps these lands and people were hit by Barbaric invasions, definitely by floods, whose consequences are still evident in the eastern side of the city. The relinquished lands turned swampy and woody again until, under the rule of the Exarchate of Ravenna, the work of water control was taken over again. In the Byzantine era a defensive line built against the Lombards split up the territory, but these could break through it around 727 under King Liutprand and occupied, among other things, the Castrum Persiceta (the name of the village was not in documents before that year). It is likely that the typical "urbis-form" of the old town centre could derive from the Lombard era: the Borgo Rotondo (Round Village). With the fall of the Lombard Kingdom (774) the early-medieval district of Persiceto (leter San Giovanni in Persiceto) belonged for a long period to the County of Modena, that stretched up to the Samoggia creek; the Abbey of Nonantola exercised his power on the territory of the Persiceto, but we could maintain that ever since the 9t century it could have been handed over to the County of Bologna: it is indeed likely that around the half of that century the parish church of San Giovanni had been built by the Bishops of Bologna. The first yieldings of wide extensive pieces of swampy and untilled land to the inhabitants of the Persiceto "ad meliorandum" by the Abbots of Nonantola (western side) and the Bishops of Bologna (eastern side) began that time: these lands would sooner be part of the future Partecipanza agraria (Agricultural Attendance). After a brief period of autonomy (between the 11th and the 12th century), the town of San Giovanni in Persiceto was handed over to the political domain of Bologna and followed its destiny: it was subjected to the Loardship of the Pepolis, of the Viscontis of the Bentivoglios and, at the beginning of the 16th century, it was ultimately subjected to the Papal rule. The 'castle' or 'land' of S. Giovanni in Persiceto in the 13th and 14th centuries was enlarged by the formation of a second circle of walls outside the Borgo Rotondo and by the creation of more external villages, surrounded, like the castle, by ditches, gates and palisades. However, because of the rebellion of the inhabitants of the Persiceto, ever since the second decade of the Quattrocento the High Council of Bologna decreed that the external villages and its palisades had to be removed, the ditches had to be filled up and all buildings that might be used as fortress had to be destroyed. The villages were destroyed only in 1481, under the rule of Giovanni II Bentivoglio, while over the following years the castle was expanded with new bastions and embankments that gave it the shape that has been fundamentally untouched for four centuries. The Bentivoglio also built, at the end of the 15th century and under the project of Gaspare Nadi, the large building that was bought by the Community in 1612 and that still nowadays is, though many times modified, the town residence. In the last years of the lordship of the Bentivoglios the digging of the Cavamento, a drain canal of all waters from the lowlands of S.Agata Bolognese, Crevalcore and San Giovanni in Persiceto: wide areas of the northern Persiceto became tillable and habitable, so that within the last thirty years of the Cinquecento a new church was built and the new parish of San Matteo della Decima was established. The inhabitants of the Persiceto thankfully donated to Giovanni Bentivoglio a vast piece of land, on which later the mansion and castle of "la Giovannina" was built.

Between the 15th and the 16th century even in the Persiceto the cultivation and the housework of the hemp was expanded, new cultures were introduced (mulberry, rice, maize), the landownership was more and more concentrated and the sharecropping system was consolidated, though the latter has been limited by the existence of its participants. During the 16th century the Persiceto was overrun by foreign armies with easily imaginable consequences: the Agricultural Attendance Institute was founded and a sharing of the common goods that took place every nine years was enhanced; the city centre underwent a process of impoverishment, whereas the weekly market on Wednesday kept flourishing thanks to old privileges. As far as local government is concerned, the oligarchy of new families faithful to the Church and subject to the Reggimento of Bologna and the Papal Legacy was established.

In the following two centuries there was a remarkable building development mostly inside the castle: many "broletti" among the buildings (little kitchen-gardens) disappeared in order to let new houses be built. Old medieval buildings were also destroyed with the same purpose, some others were irreversibly modified.

New churches and convents were built (among the other things, with the demolition of the old parish, a collegiate church was rebuilt there). On the grounding of the old fortress the Ospedale del SS. Salvatore (now seat of the Town Library "G. G. Croce" and of the historical record office). The town theatre was built there. The incompetent government of the Papal Legates on the contrary conditioned in a negative sense the development of the agricultural economy, whereas in some other zones of the Padan plain new renewing processes were triggered that in the half of the Settecento enhanced an agricultural nad economic revolution. In the Persiceto we can pinpoint samples of early rural industry: for centuries the inhabitants of the Persiceto raised and worked out the hemp, but then not only the local production (together with cloth machining) flowed to the weekly market, but also the hemp coming from other places (such as for instance Cento and Crevalcore), so that its trade was included in the announcements. The exceeding cloths were exported mostly to Venice. In the Napoleon era the parishes of the Persiceto and of the area around Sant'Agata Bolognese were joined together in order to give birth to four cantons (1796) and the new town of San Giovanni in Persiceto was briefly part of the Department of the Alta Padusa, with Cento as chief town (1797), later it became the seat of the District of the Samoggia. Between 1798 and 1799 the community life was upset by plunderings, turmoils and seizures. In the half of 1799, after the retreat of the French and of their allies of the Cisalpine republic, the Persiceto was invaded by Russians and Austrians, that hurried up and restored the "ancien régime". However in 1800 the District of Samoggia was restored. With the establishment of the Italian Republic (1802) San Giovanni in Persiceto was again under the government of Cento, where a Deputy Prefecture was established. In the first years of the Ottocento and the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy (March 1805) calm came back into the territory of the Persiceto, but this was again overturned in 1814 by the fall of Napoleon until the Papal government was restored in July 1815. In the twenty years between 1796 and 1815, although the structures of the boards of direction and their denominations were changed, in San Giovanni in Persiceto mostly the same families did the same civil service, who were clearly particularly fit for adaptation. Within the same years the feudal privileges and the tithe were abolished, the pieces of land belonging to the Church were forfeited and the landed property was accumulated. The rice culture with its following crisis of the sharecropping system was expanded and so did even the agricultural day-labourers. With the restoration of the Papal rule remarkable works for the improvement of the "Castle" were started off and Pope Gregory XVI bestowed San Giovanni in 1838 the title of city. In 1857 the inhabitants of the Persiceto were visited by Pius IX, but here also the liberal ideals and the striving to the independence and national unity were secretly creeping.

Some young men from the Persiceto were enrolled as volunteers in the wars of Independence even before the region had been annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia (1860); but when the most hated grist-tax was reintroduced by the national government, San Giovanni in Persiceto was the theatre of an unforgettable insurrection of peasants (January 7, 1869). Meanwhile some handicraft shops had become larger and were turned into factories that employed hundreds of workers: for instance, nail blscksmiths became big managers and started producing iron beds and furniture that were sold even abroad, so that San Giovanni in Persiceto merited the name of little Manchester of the Emilia. Over the last decades of the Ottocento public education was expanded, the traditional classical education was substituted by a technical school, the Società di mutuo soccorso (Company for mutual aid) among handicraft and factory workers was founded; during Carnival in 1874 the first fancy dress convoys were held, in 1876 the Società ginnastica Persicetana (Gymnastical Society of th Persiceto); in 1877 the Cassa di Risparmio was opened to the public and ten years later the railway track between Bologna and the Persiceto of the railroad Bologna/Verona was opened. The story of the Persiceto of the last hundred years is marked by harsh fights for land; the working classes shifted then from rebellion into organization: after the Comune of Paris (1871) in 1872 a new section of the Fascio operaio organized by the former Garibaldi's soldier Teobaldo Buggini was established, a close friend of Andrea Costa; in 1873 the first strike of blue collars in a local factory was recorded; in 1874 some internationalists of the Persiceto tried to take part into the bakunian movement of Bologna; after the slump of the Anarchical International Movement the Società di sostentamento tra gli operai Society of subsidizes between workers (first local egalitarian socialist group) and in 1891 the Cooperativa braccianti that worked until the 1970s of the Novecento. In 1892 the 1st of May was celebrated for the first time with a private meeting, in 1893 the socialist section was founded, in 1896 an electoral committee to back up the socialist candidate to the Camera dei deputati (House of Representatives)was established; in 1898 the socialists gained back the management of the Cooperativa braccianti by now run by liberals. At the beginning of the 20th century the first resistance unions of blue collars and farmers were founded; the foundation of the Cooperativa operai metallurgici (Cooperative of metal workers) traces back to 1904 and it could escape the hostile interferences of the fascist regime. Now it has reached high productive and trading levels (the mark COM is now known all around the world), the modern political parties that developed their propaganda even with the help of many famous local papers turned out to be particularly lively and quarrelsome; in 1904 in the borough of San Giovanni in Persiceto for the first time a socialist representative was elected 8Giacomo Ferri), in the same year the first Casa del Popolo was inaugurated; in 1907 even the ruling of the Coume was handed over to the Socialists (as an anticlerical inspiration it was named, form 1912 to 1927, Persiceto). After the Great War even in Persiceto the land fight broke out again, during which the massacre of Decima by public forces (5th April 1920) was carried out; in the political and social challenges particularly the fascists resorted to force against the socialists and their institution: many people of the Persiceto had to leave the country because of their antifascist resentments or had to undergo the jail or confinement. During World War II, before and after July 25, 1943, especially over the twenty months of the German occupation, even in the Persiceto the resistance against the Nazis and the fascists was organised; partisans of the Persiceto operated in the 63rd Garibaldi brigade carried out mainly sabotage actions on the railway line between Bologna and the Brennerpass and on the roads. The partisan forces underwent heavy losses after the mopping-up operations in Amola (5 December 1944), in Borgata Città (Inner City- December 7) and in many other opportunities; in the night between the 20th and the April 21, 1945 partisan brigades took over in order to prevent the destruction of warehouses and factories by the running away Germans, whereas the Allied troops entered the town the following night. After the Liberation the inhabitants of the Persiceto took part with commitment and interest into the political and socila fights. In the elections the left-wing parties, the communist and the socialist, prevail and ruled together the municipality until 1980; the land fight record again force acts; heavy ideological contrasts ovverran the town. After the 1950s San Giovanni in Persiceto, a centre of agricultural production known for its markets (when in the Foro Boario thousands of cattle were gathered), undergoes deep transformations. form a mainly agricultural economy to an industrial and trading economy; the land is depopulated and the city expands, which becomes the place even of many high school institutions, after some decades of obliviance the city library was born again; an important intermunicipal centre of sport plants is founded, an extremely modern observatory is founded.

Nowadays, just 10 km away from the Northern hinterland of Bologna, San Giovanni in Persiceto is going to become a big economic centre of the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, with which it will son be linked by a light railway.

[edit] Trivia

In Sturmtruppen, a famous Italian comic strip written by Bonvi, San Giovanni in Persiceto is the birthplace of one of the main characters, the Fiero Alleaten Galeazzo Musolesi.