History
The name Cento is a reference to the centuriation of the Po Valley: the reclamation,deforestation and subdivison of the land by the Romans in the second century BC. But Cento's growth from its origin as a
little fishing village in the marshes (revealed in the city's coat of arms featuring a red shrimp) to an established farming town took place in the first few centuries after the year one thousand.
In this age of extensive land reclamation and donations by the Bishop of Bologna and the Abbot of Nonantola
the Partecipanza Agraria was established: an institution in which land was redistributed every twenty years
among the male heirs of the families who constituted the initial core of the community in the twelfth century.
Always a borderland, Cento, though owned by the Church of Bologna, repeatedly found itself in the sights of bordering states over the centuries, especially the Dukedom of Ferrara.
In 1502 Pope Alexander VI took it away from the dominion of the Bishop of Bologna and made it part of the dowry of his daughter Lucrezia Borgia, promised in marriage to Duke Alfonso I d'Este.
Returned to the dominion of the Holy See in 1598, in the 17th and 18th centuries Cento experienced a golden age of architectural and urban renewal and a flowering of culture and the arts: this was the context in which the great Baroque painter Guercino was
born and worked.
This rebirth was officially recognised in 1754, when Pope Benedict XIV assigned Cento the rank of "city".
POPULATION AS OF 31/12/2004: 31,475
TERRITORIAL EXTENSION: 64 KM2
ELEVATION ABOVE SEA LEVEL: MIN. 10 M, MAX. 20 M