Ancient era

The most important place of prehistory in Rezzato was Ca' dei Grii, a cave on the south side of Monte Regogna. During some researches done from 1954 to 1968, were discovered some objects of the Neolithic period, the oldest of the area. Probably the cave was a refuge for some prehistoric men or for some families during the Second World War. It was destroyed in 1969 by an adjacent marble's pit.

Modern era

Virle Treponti Town Hall in 1917.

The origin of this town name is thought to be the medieval "Regadium", which meant "royal court", a term used to designate the area surrounding the city of Brescia. Benedictine monks contributed to the founding of Rezzato by draining the land and digging irrigation canals on the Valverde plain.

Rezzato became a free comune on 12 March 1299, when the inhabitants obtained by the bishop of Brescia Berardo Maggi the permission to autonomize the village from the Benedictine monastery of St. Eufemia.

In the 14th century, battles between Guelph and Ghibelline city-states led to domination over Milan and the nearby territory by the powerful Visconti family, backed by the emperor Henry VII. While the western part of Lombardy was taken over by the Sforza family in the 15th century, Brescia became part of the Venetian Republic in 1429. Under Venice, local commerce and crafts prospered, and Rezzato became known for its marble. Stone cutting was the predominant business in Rezzato from the 15th to the early 20th century.

Commemorative plaque of the Battle of Treponti.

Because of its nearness to the city and its particular climate, many noble families built their holiday houses in Rezzato. The noble Giacomo Chizzola, after the withdrawal by politics, founded in his villa a school for the children of the rich families in Brescia, so that they could learn Latin. It is known that the mathematician Niccolò Tartaglia gave a lesson in Euclide, and Chizzola taught rural economy. This academy was maybe the most ancient agricultural academy in the world.

Some notable person visited and stayed in Rezzato during the 19th century: Napoleone and Garibaldi spent a night in Villa Fenaroli, while the Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli used to come to Rezzato in summer to spend his holidays.

On 15 June 1859, in Rezzato took place the notable "Battle of Treponti", one of the battles of the Second War of Independence, fought between Garibaldi and the Austrians.

The municipal territory took on its current dimensions in 1928, with the addition of the village of Virle Treponti.

Topography

The comune of Rezzato in the Province of Brescia.

Rezzato is located in the northern section of the Po Valley, immediately east of Brescia, at the foot of the Brescian Prealps.

The territory consists of three large morphological macroregions: the flat bight between Monte Maddalena, the hills of Botticino and the Monte Regogna. The hilly system consists of the mountains Regogna, Fieno (the highest point of the town's territory at 430 metres (1,410 ft)) and Marguzzo, and two hills called Peladolo and Poggio San Martino. While the northern part of the territory is hilly, the southern area of the town is flat. The administrative comune covers a total area of 18.2 square kilometres (7.0 sq mi).

The hills of the entire area are made up by different types of stones. The first one to be considered is the "corna" consisting of calcium carbonate and magnesium, which would have formed almost 193 million years ago. This stone is present throughout the basin between Monte Regogna and Monte Marguzzo, including Poggio San Martino. Important studies carried out on Mount Regogna allowed to identify various fossilized forms of marine life and marine life. The age of the "corso" begins shortly after the corna one. This stone is in the lower part of Monte Regogna. Since they are very low parts, a time so submerged in the sea, fossil shells of ammonite and sea urchins have been found here. The "medolo", which rises on the west side of Monte Regogna, has a much newer formation (178 million years ago) and is a stone made up of limestone marbles. The medolo is characteristic of a deep marine environment and therefore even here rivers of fossil shells emerge.

At just 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the Garda Lake, it is crossed by the so-called Naviglio Grande Bresciano, an ancient canal built in 1253, from which departs a huge system of small canals now mostly covered and still today used for agriculture. Other important canals are the Rino, a torrent that coming from the mountains crosses the historic center of Virle Treponti and enters the Naviglio Grande at the highway of Treponti. Near the mouth of the Rino, from the waters of the Naviglio the canal Lupa flows through the countryside south of Treponti towards Castenedolo. From Botticino descends the torrent Rino Musia that crosses part of the northeast wooded area of the town and then enters the city of Brescia.

Climate

According to the Köppen climate classification, Rezzato has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa). Its average annual temperature is 13.7 °C (57 °F): 18.2 °C (65 °F) during the day and 9.1 °C (48 °F) at night. The warmest months are June, July, and August, with high temperatures from 27.8 °C (82 °F) to 30.3 °C (87 °F). The coldest are December, January, and February, with low temperatures from −1.5 °C (29 °F) to 0.6 °C (33 °F).

Winter is cold but snowfall is rare; it mainly occurs from December through February. Summer can be sultry, when humidity levels are high and peak temperatures can reach 36 °C (97 °F). Spring and autumn are generally pleasant, with temperatures ranging between 10 °C (50 °F) and 20 °C (68 °F).

The relative humidity is high throughout the year, especially in winter when it causes fog, mainly from dusk until late morning, although the phenomenon has become increasingly less frequent in recent years.

Precipitation is spread evenly throughout the year. The driest month is December, while the wettest months are April/May and October/November.

Shrine of Our Lady of Valverde

The main church on the site of the shrine (right) and the chapel on the holy pond (left).

The shrine was built in a large wooded area in the northern part of the town (the so-called "Valverde", which means "green valley"). A small chapel called Rotonda was built here in 1099, and it is the most ancient sign of the religious faith of the entire zone. The shrine itself was only built between 1601 and 1643, after the archbishop of Milan Carlo Borromeo visited the town and ordered a big church to be built on a rural site in which there were a lot of abandoned and ruined altars built chaotically during the 15th century.

The site is one of the most important in the entire province because of the so-called "miracle of Valverde", a simultaneous apparition of the Virgin Mary and Christ which allegedly took place in the summer of 1399. Some chronicles tell that a peasant was working in his field when suddenly he saw a man dressed in red, who he recognised as Christ. The man told the peasant to throw the three pieces of bread that he had in his haversack in a little pond nearby. When he arrived at the pond, the peasant saw a lady, the Virgin Mary, who stopped him and ordered him to go back to Christ without throwing the bread into the pond. The peasant went back to Christ and then came back another time to the pond, where the Virgin told him that the three pieces of bread represented war, famine and plague. By throwing only one piece (symbolising plague) into the pond, the Virgin Mary interceded to save the village from war and famine. According to the chronicles, another apparition occurred on 11 October 1711, when two boys who were picking chestnuts in the nearby wood suddenly saw a great light coming from the pond and a female voice calling them.

To remember the 1399 apparition every year on the last Sunday of July, there is a historical procession of saints from the town centre to the shrine and then to the holy pond where a man disguised as a peasant dives into the water to recover one of the pieces of holy bread.

St. James church

The church of St. James and its abandoned cascina.

With the shrine of Our Lady of Valverde it's the most important symbol of the medieval religious faith in Rezzato. The small church was built in 1122 in the middle of the countryside, in the southern part of the town. Placed on the way to Rome, it worked as an inn for pilgrims who were attacked by a community of robbers, settled in the nearby town of Castenedolo. Because of the frequent looting, in 1132 pope Innocent XII ordered the excommunication of those who desecrated the church and its inn.

During the 15th century, a big cascina a corte was built around the church. Until the 1960s more than 300 people lived here and every Sunday a priest came from the town to celebrate a mass.

St. Peter Franciscan monastery

Built by the Benedictine monks in 1008 on the ruins of a Roman villa at the top of the St. Peter's Hill, it served as the main parish of Rezzato until 1460. In that period it became a Capuchin monastery. Closed by the French in 1798, reopened in 1836 and then reclosed in 1866 by the Italian government, the monastery was definitely reopened by the Franciscan friars in 1869 and also used as a prison during the First World War. It hosts an ancient library.

Recycling

Since December 2009, the municipality of Rezzato has adopted a kerbside collection system for removing household waste (materials separately collected are: green waste, kitchen waste, paper, plastics, aluminium and glass, diapers, industrial products). The adoption of this new system improved the percentage of recycled waste on total municipal waste production:

Year	% of recycled waste
2010	74,5%
2011	74,7%
2012	73,8%
2013	73,1%
2014	76,4%
2015	75,6%
2016	75,6%
2017	76,9%
2018	78,2%