Montecorone is an ancient village, whose fortified castle has been mentioned since 1279. In 1408 it was one of the castles donated by Marquis Niccolò III d'Este to Uguccione dei Contrari who joined it to the Chief Magistrate of Savignano of the Marquisate of Vignola.

Its name could derive from the Latin Coronius and from its location in the centre of a crown of mountains.

The village is characterised by stone buildings decorated with sandstone portals and ecclesiastical buildings including the seventeenth-century Oratory of San Rocco and the Church of Santa Giustina, first mentioned in 1277.

The village was the birthplace of Giovanni Maria Bononcini, who was born there on 23 September 1642; author of the famous work Musico prattico, published in 1673, which for successive generations represented an essential compendium of Italian counterpoint art of that period and was the greatest exponent of the Modenese instrumental school in the late seventeenth century.