Cento

Cento is a town and comune in the province of Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The name Cento is a reference to the centuriation of the Po Valley. Cento's boom from its beginning as a bit fishing village inside the marshes to an established farming metropolis occurred in the first few centuries within the second millennium. The Bishop of Bologna and the Abbot of Nonantola set up the Partecipanza Agraria, an group in which land could perpetually be redistributed every 20 years a number of the male heirs of the families who constituted the preliminary middle of the community in the 12^th century.

In 1502 Pope Alexander VI took it far from the kingdom of the Bishop of Bologna and made it a part of the dowry of his daughter Lucrezia Borgia, betrothed to Duke Alfonso I d'Este and become later returned to the Papal States in 1598. South-east of the metropolis lies the small historic fortification of Pieve di Cento.