Mordano – Cloister of the Monastery of San Francesco

In the period of Byzantine, Ravenna territory was organized in “funds” (from the Latin ” fundus, small farm) and “masse” (a set of funds with at least one parish church). In the early Middle Ages there was the fundus Bibani, a largely uncultivated woodland. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the land reclamation promoted by the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria in Regola, originated the Bibani “massa”. The new cultivable lands attracted population flows from the surrounding areas; the outcome of this process was the birth of the country. Later the fortress was built. Throughout the early Middle Ages the feud of Mordano was the subject of disputes between Bologna and Imola (which is only 11 kilometers away). At the end of the thirteenth century Maghinardo Pagani took possession of the feud, which he then left to his friend Matteo Ragnolo. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, Della Bordella di Imola became the owner of the feud. Later Mordano passing first under the Milanese, then the Venetians, the Faentines and the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, Girolamo Riario. When Riario dead, Mordano passed to his widow Caterina Sforza, but did not hold it for long time. In fact, in 1494 she had to surrender it to the French of Charles VIII. It, like other provincial towns, was subject to Napoleonic conquests and, with the end of the State of the Church, the Governor of Provisional Provinces Luigi Carlo Farini, in 1859, redefined the territorial circumscriptions aggregating the Municipality of Mordano to the Province of Bologna.