Located along the ancient Via Salaria, at short distance from the regional capital of Emilia, Castenaso is a town in the province of Bologna. Evidence attests the presence of settlements in the area since the Villanova period and the present town takes its name from one of its districts, still today called Castenaso. During the XIX century, Count Giovanni Gozzadini, an authoritative archaeologist of Bologna of the time, organized here a systematic campaign of excavations, that brought to light an enormous amount of finds dating from the ninth century B.C. (including a necropolis s and foundations of several huts, exhibits preserved at the Civic Museum in Bologna).
In Roman times the first settlement was already known as "castrum Nasicae", named after the Roman consul Publius Scipio (known with the nickname Nasica for the length of his nose), who defeated the Gauls in 190 B.C. on the shores of the river Idice, in a battle represented in the coat of arms of the present municipality. Important traces of the Roman domination are evident in the distribution of the nearby territories in orthogonal fields based on the old Roman scheme.
Sites of Interest:
- the Church of St. John the Baptist, with vestments and XVIII century masterpieces of the Bolognese school;
- the XVII century Church of Our Lady of Pilar. Famous for the celebration of the wedding between Rossini and the soprano Isabella Colbran;
- the XII century Church of San Gimignano, completely destroyed in the XVI century by the troops of Cesare Borgia and rebuilt in 1929 in neo Classical style;
- Villa Molinari-Pradelli;
- Palazzo Guidotti.