🏔 BAJARDO, LIGURIA

The historic center has existed since the first millennium BC. when it was an important place of worship for the Druids - Celtic priests - where some stone obelisks are still present.

In the VII-VI century BC the area was populated by Celts and Ligurians, united in a real economic-religious symbiosis, which was soon joined by Greeks and Iberians who introduced the cultivation of olives and vines. The Romans came to meet the various local populations in the third century BC. and they first of all transformed the original Druidic casket into a fortress, still partially visible today.

Around the middle of the 13th century the daughter of Count Oberto Veirana married Pietro di Ceva, to whom, after the death of his father, he passed the dominion over various inland towns, including Bajardo, who thus became a possession of the Marquisate of Clavesana. The increasing pressure of the Genoese soon led Pietro and his wife to sell their possessions in the far west to the government of the Republic of Genoa, which officially bought them with related rights and prebends through an act drawn up in Genoa on 24 November 1259 in the presence of the captain of the people Guglielmo Boccanegra at the total price of 2,300 Genoese lire. From that moment on, Bajardo would have followed the political fortunes of the republic under the jurisdiction of the Triora podestà.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the territory passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

In 1887 the town was semi-destroyed and the inhabitants decimated: on February 27 the earth shook and the roof of the church of San Nicolò (built on the remains of an ancient pagan temple sacred to the god Abelio) collapsed on the faithful, gathered for Ash Wednesday: 226 inhabitants died. Following the earthquake and consequent to the collapse of the roof of the church, some columns and artifacts of the pagan temple on which the church had been built came to light. On the capitals, there are some figures of faces that have somatic features reminiscent of Mongolian populations.

In the thirties of the twentieth century a family of musicians settled in the town, so much so that there was hope for a cultural rebirth of the village. The town after the armistice of 8 September 1943 became a bulwark of the partisan resistance. On August 14, 1944, a very hard battle took place, celebrated by Mario Mascia in his book published immediately after the war concerning the Partisan Struggle in the province of Imperia The epic of the barefoot army. Italo Calvino also took part in the battle.

Legend has it that the toponymy originates from the paladin Rinaldo, who gave the town the name of his steed, Bajardo, in fact.

Видео 🏔 BAJARDO, LIGURIA канала Aleksei Azarov