Duchy of Galliera original seat

In San Venanzio of Galliera (5 km far from Galliera), opposite the church, there is Palazzo Bonora.

The statues supporting the balcony (in the picture) reproduce urban models, in particular the entrance to Palazzo Davia Bargellini in Bologna.

Today the municipal headquarters, it was originally the residence of the Bonora family, agrarian merchants who for decades successfully managed the patrimonial estate of the “Duchy of Galliera”.

The descent of Napoleonic troops in 1796 ushered in a new period for the Reno plain, marked by an agricultural development of a capitalistic nature. The main advocate of the process of modernisation of the Bolognese agrarian economy was Antonio Aldini. A descendant of an upper-middle class family, grandson of the scientist Luigi Galvani and himself a professor of Law, he was one of Napoleon’s ministers and one of the founders of the Cisalpina Republic.

At the turn of the 18th century, Aldini managed to buy a good 52 properties between Galliera and S. Pietro in Casale, which he grouped together according to the criteria of a unitary productive system. Thus a single business of notable dimensions was created, comprising ninety rural buildings, internal means of communication and a modern irrigation system allowing the cultivation of rice on a vast scale.

The rice was transported along the Riolo Canal to the port of Malalbergo and then sent to Bologna on the Navile Canal. The rice-paddies were managed ''in economia'' (i.e. by workers with salaries), the first step in the definitive destruction of the sharecropping system in the Bolognese countryside and the transformation of peasant families into the new rural proletariat.

In 1812, the estate was bought by Napoleon, who a year later gave it the title ''Duchy of Galliera'', a solid dowry for his niece Giuseppina Eugenia Beauharnais, daughter of the Viceroy of Italy.

This building has hosted the municipal offices since 1948.