Until 1863 it was called Gabiano, which is why its inhabitants are called Gabianesi...#tuttitaly
Borgo San Giacomo is an Italian town of 5554 inhabitants in the province of Brescia in Lombardy. Until 1863, it bore the name Gabiano, which is why its inhabitants are called Gabianesi.
Little is known about the history of the country. The documentation of the sources of Gabiano's history is indirect and highly incomplete. For centuries, the news has been very scarce, incomplete, and attributable to administrative acts of sometimes irrelevant interest. The most ancient period is still entrusted to archaeological sources. But even these sources help us only partially.
Among the monuments and places of interest of Borgo San Giacomo, we find:
- Church of the Immaculate Conception. Sacred buildings of medieval origin are already mentioned in the episcopal acts of 1300 and were initially dedicated to San Giacomo. It was the parish church of the ancient Gabiano until the early 1600s. It was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Mary after the new parish church was built following the visit of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo.
- Parish church of San Giacomo. A church was built between 1594 and 1609, consecrated on 8 June 1625 by the bishop of Zante Michele Varoglio.
Inside, on the altar of the SS. Sacramento (1604) stands as a monumental space that frames the Last Supper, the work of Giovanni Gandino, the Elder, while the central picture of the altar of the Madonna (1691) represents the episode of the circumcision of Jesus by Francesco Boccaccino. Among the 16th-century finds is the marble basin of the Baptistery (1577), belonging to the previous parish church.
- Church of San Rocco or the Madonna del Rosario. Subsidiary churches were built from 1479, fulfilling a popular vote after the Black Death of 1476-79.
- Church of San Genesio, dating back to at least 1200. The current church is a fifteenth-century construction remodeled in the following centuries and restored in 1908. At the end of the elegant fifteenth-century Portichetto, on the church's northern side, the traditional Sepulcher was erected in 1550 with ten wooden statues.
- Eighteenth-century cemetery of the churchyard. Completed in 1778 and initially called Camposanto di San Giacomo, it became commonly known as the "Parvis." It has the form of an elegant cloister with arcades, a central chapel, and a facade facing the street.
In 1806, Napoleonic law forbade burying the dead inside the town, and in 1822 the Camposanto del Sagrato was definitively abandoned.
- Martinengo Castle. Rebuilt in 1485 by Count Bernardino Martinengo. It is the Padernello castle in the Lower Brescia area. A fifteenth-century manor, with a drawbridge still functioning, emerges majestically from the water of its moat. A mysterious legend hangs around the castle rooms: the story of the white lady, a ghost who returns every ten years on the night of July 20 following the magic of fireflies.
- Church of Santa Maria in Val Verde. The church fell into disrepair in 1579 and was rebuilt in 1583 by Count Pompilio Martinengo Cesaresco.
- Church of the SS. Redeemer. The population of Padernello at the beginning of the 1800s had a particular devotion to a beautiful fifteenth-century crucifix venerated in the chapel of the old cemetery adjacent to the parish church. Since the faithful wanted to give him a more dignified location, it was decided, around 1825, to build a small sanctuary near the new cemetery just outside the town.
In 1826, Count Silvio Martinengo donated the land on which the Redentore church was to rise to the parish of Padernello.
Borgo San Giacomo certainly has good weapons to draw up a credible and detailed history, which can largely dispel the darkness that seemed to envelop and cover the ancient but more recent events of the place.
