The Italian Almanac for October 19: stories and curiosities

Place names 📅 1168

Alessandria, the Italian city named after a pope

In 1168 the Lombard League raised a new town on the plain of Piedmont, in north-west Italy, and called it Civitas Nova: “a collective enterprise”, as Umberto Eco wrote. Two years later it was offered as a fief to Pope Alexander III and took the name it still carries: Alessandria. Frederick Barbarossa besieged it in the autumn of 1174; the town held out all winter, and on 12 April 1175 the emperor burned his camp and left. Legend credits a peasant, Gagliaudo, who fed the last grain to his cow and led her out to graze under the walls: once captured, he convinced the besiegers the town had food to spare. Alessandria today has close to 94,000 inhabitants.

📍 Discover Alessandria

Today's tidbits

Italian records 2014

On Pantelleria the vines grow in a hole, and UNESCO listed the practice as world heritage

On Pantelleria, off Sicily, vines hug the ground: the alberello pantesco, the local bush vine, is kept low and grows inside a basin dug into the soil to shelter it from the wind, since the climate here is hostile nine or ten months a year. The know-how passes by word of mouth, in dialect, among farmers working small plots. The grape is Zibibbo, the white variety behind the island's passito; the word comes from the Arabic zabīb, raisin. On 26 November 2014 in Paris, UNESCO inscribed the practice on its intangible heritage list, the first farming practice in the world to get there. The island lies 110 km from Sicily and 65 km from Tunisia.

📍 Pantelleria →

Busted myths

Amatriciana is not from Rome: it comes from Amatrice, and it started without tomato

You order amatriciana in Rome, but the name says where it comes from: Amatrice, in the mountains of Rieti province, in Lazio, a town that belonged to Abruzzo until 1927. The mother recipe is white, guanciale and pecorino, and is called gricia: it began as a dip for bread. The long tomato, grown by Neapolitans around Vesuvius since the late 1700s, came later and turned that sauce into a dressing for spaghetti. Innkeepers carried it to Rome: in the late 1800s many of the city's trattoria keepers came from Amatrice. Since 6 March 2020 it has been an EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed: spaghetti, no garlic, no onion, and no pancetta in place of guanciale.

📍 Amatrice →

🎉 Celebrations today in…

Patron saint festival 📍 Lentate sul Seveso

Saint Vitus, patron of the town of the four districts

📅 Every year, on the Monday following the third Sunday of October; the town festival is held on 26 July

Lentate sul Seveso celebrates Saint Vitus on the Monday following the third Sunday of October, in the church dedicated to him; on 26 July, the town festival is instead held, with contests between the four districts (piazza, laghetto, camporia and borghetto).

Patron saint festival 📍 Lissone

Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the parish church celebrated on Milan Cathedral's day

📅 Every year, on the third Sunday of October and the following Monday, marking the dedication of Milan Cathedral

Lissone celebrates its patronal feast on the third Sunday of October and the following Monday, the day marking the dedication of Milan's cathedral; Saints Peter and Paul, patrons of the town's parish church, are instead separately commemorated on 29 June.