The village and its history - Arena Po

The toponym Arena can be traced back to the sandy nature of the river terrain on which it stands. The Po specification was added later, in 1863.
The origins of the village can be traced back to archaeological evidence dating back to Roman populations who settled along the banks of the river, a very important communication route between the Adriatic Sea and the Po inland.
Thanks to its strategic position, on the border between the territory of Pavia and Piacenza, it became a commercial center and a place of transit towards the opposite bank of the river. In Roman times, the Arenese territory belonged to the municipal pole of Placentia which included the intersected area of the Bardonezza, Versa, Scuropasso and Coppa streams. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, a neighboring military settlement of Sarmatian origin confirmed its strategic role as a garrison position. Role that he maintained with the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines and the Lombards. The latter in 569 undertook with Alboino the conquest of Po Valley cities including Pavia, subduing the area to the south of the Po called "ultrapadanum", the current Oltrepò Pavese, to create the starting point for the conquest of Piacenza after 590. Arena fell under the civil orbit of Pavia but remained under the diocese of Piacenza for a long time. It is likely that it was part of the complex fortified system established along the line of the Bardonezza stream, "limes" between the Lombard and Byzantine alignments, a military garrison that controlled both the course of the Po and the very important ancient via Postumia later called via Romea, (the via ran parallel to the course of the river and just at the level of Arena a secondary artery that crossed the Po and joined the connecting road, still used in the Middle Ages, between Ticinum and Laus Pompea). The Lombard settlement in Arena is confirmed both by the presence of "an arimannia" as the fulcrum of the organization of the territory and by the presence of an ancient parish church and a chapel dedicated respectively to St. Peter and St. Salvatore, whose cult was very common among the Lombards.

The first mention of the Municipality of Arena dates back to 1246 but it is plausible that already at the beginning of the 12th century there was a permanently organized community body. Given its "limited" position, in the communal age it was the scene of clashes between Ghibelline Pavia and Piacenza allied with Milan. Its port, the extreme outpost against Piacenza, was a military support base. Towards the end of the 13th century the autonomy of the rural communes was about to end. On 1271 it appears that the Municipality of Arena ceded all the assets and rights belonging to the community to Giacomo Portalbera and Riccardo Sacchetti with the right to redeem. In 1290 the Municipality, unable to redeem the prerogatives sold, found the best bidder in Manfredo Beccaria who, with an offer of 600 Pavesi lire, laid the legal bases on his personal Lordship on Arena. The importance of Arena and its river port was maintained in the Sforza age when it was once again a military base. There is news of a "portonarius" who depended on guards in charge of controlling the traffic on the river under the orders of the ducal chancellery and the captain of the Naviglio residing in Milan. Most of the constables and “navaroli” of the ducal fleet came from Arena where it was easy to find men who were experts in navigation because they were ferrymen and sand miners on the river.

At the end of the 15th century, the gradual process of economic recession of the Sforza Duchy began and many people in Arena were forced to abandon their lands or sell them due to the excessive tax burden. The economic crisis reached its peak in the age of Spanish domination in the 1500s.
The fiefdom of Arena and the noble title were put to the public enchantment and acquired by the Maggi family of Milan who sold them in the same year to the senator Alessandro Speciani of Pavia. The Speciani family will keep the fiefdom for a century, also owning the duties, the salt census, the horse tax and the income on the river port. In the 17th century the Mandelli family will take over with Ottone Francesco. During the siege of Pavia in 1655 it was conquered by the Franco-Savoyards who entered Lombardy and resumed in the same year by the Spaniards. Together with the Mandellis between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Baroque aristocracy, the Negri, the Isimbardi who built their large residences in Arena and in the territory were added to the old feudal families. In 1743, together with other towns in the Oltrepò Pavese, it was detached from the Principality of Pavia, passing to the Savoy family. With the constitution of the new Province of Voghera in 1744, the foundations of the modern municipality of Arena were laid. Aggregated in the Napoleonic era in the department of Genoa, in 1815 it was definitively included in the district of Stradella belonging to the province of Voghera and to the division of Alessandria. Only in 1859 will it return to be part of the rebuilt province of Pavia inserted in the district of Stradella in the district of Voghera. From 1926 to 1946, the Municipality was administered by the Podestà, the most famous was Giuseppe Nocca, to whom the restoration of the church of San Giorgio is linked. On April 8, 1862, Arena Po saw Garibaldi as the guest of Giacomo Griziotti, his brother in arms in the landing of the thousand. In the grocery run by the Griziotti, the people of Arena defined it as a blessed shop for the credit open to all, they found hospitality and comfort exiles and patriots persecuted and hunted down.