Sunday 7th September 2025 – Montecelli d’Ongina, Italy

Another good start and beautiful scenery – lakes, mountains and snow on the way to the Gotthard Tunnel. The queue for the tunnel was not too long and we soon started on the 17km drive through it. A very long descent followed, taking us to the Italian border, round Milan and along flat land until we turned off the motorway to Monticelli d’Ongina. The aire, a quiet car park, was very close to the centre of the town and we chose a place in the shade of a tree as it was very hot (28°C ish). On the way into the town we had passed a castle and set off to investigate. A five minute walk took us to Pallavicino Casali, a 15^th century moated castle built by a crossing of the mighty River Po and guarding the route between Piacenza and Cremona. We paid the €5 entrance fee to visit the three small museums and have a guided tour of the Bembo Chapel. The first museum had an aquarium, fishing equipment and many model boats. The second museum was very small and covered the local archaeology, whilst the third was a much larger, interesting, ethnographical museum.
Then came the tour of the chapel. The guide had warned us that he didn’t speak English and we indicated that we didn’t speak Italian but that didn’t stop him giving us a 15+ minute history of the castle of which we understood about 1%. We think that he told us that there had been an earlier castle(or building?) before the castle and that the Pallacicino were an important land-owning family. He then took us up to the chapel where we saw some impressive 15^th century frescoes thought to have been painted by the famous Italian fresco painter, Bembo.
Close to the castle was an impressive church with an even more impressive bell tower. Unfortunately, the church was undergoing a lengthy restoration and was not open to the public. Next to the church is a pizzeria and, later, we had our first, excellent, Italian pizzas of the holiday.
Returning from dinner we looked around for the blood moon – a total lunar eclipse. We had missed the totality but saw the moon gradually appearing from the eclipse.
Photos: The church undergoing restoration; The Pallavicino Castle; A bread oven in the ethnographical museum; George & the Dragon from the Bembo Chapel.