During the first century of the year 1000, the Benedictine monks of Santa Giustina of Padua began a land reclamation, which until then had remained a marshy area. From the early 1400s the monks transferred the center of their administration to Correzzola and here, close to a bend of the Bacchiglione river, an essential transport route for goods and the famous “Via del Sale”, they gave life to the grandiose “Benedictine Court”. In addition to the courtyard, the Benedictines built about ninety brick farmhouses covered with tiles. But the real revolution of the Benedictines was the organization of the territory which was divided into five “gastaldie”, each entrusted to a gastaldo (‘chanberlain’), further subdivided into possessions, i.e. fields, which were rented to the colonists, who lived in the various farmhouses of reference. An organization of the campaign, that continues to be current even today.
