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🔔 The Italian Almanac

October 2

Stories and curiosities for October 2, from the Italy of a thousand bell towers.

It started here 📅 1986

Slow Food was born in Bra: from a street in the Roero hills to more than 160 countries

Bra, 29,921 people in the Roero, province of Cuneo, Piedmont, has a street called via Mendicità Istruita: at number 14 stands the world headquarters of Slow Food. It all began in 1986, when Carlo Petrini founded Arcigola here, an offshoot of the Arci association. On 10 December 1989, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, delegates from 15 countries signed the manifesto and the movement went international, with the snail as its symbol. Today Slow Food is active in more than 160 countries, but the centre has not moved: Bra hosts Cheese, the international cheese fair, and in the hamlet of Pollenzo the University of Gastronomic Sciences has run since 2004.

📍 Discover Bra

Today's tidbits

Place names

Re, two letters in the Val Vigezzo: the shortest municipality name in Italy

The sign at the village entrance is quickly read: Re. In the Val Vigezzo, in Piedmont's province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, it shares with Ne, near Genoa, and Vo', near Padua, the record for the shortest municipality name in Italy. It is the last comune before Switzerland, 689 inhabitants at 710 metres, with the border post in the hamlet of Ponte Ribellasca. Small name, huge church: the sanctuary of the Madonna del Sangue, with a 51-metre dome, consecrated in 1958. It recalls 1494, when Giovanni Zucono, furious after losing at gambling, struck a fresco of the Madonna with a stone: the next morning, say the records of the local magistrate, the image was bleeding.

📍 Re →
Busted myths

Pistoia claims the pistol, but the dictionaries look to Bohemia

In Pistoia, in Tuscany, they tell it this way: the pistol is named after the city, where 16th-century gunsmiths made the first handguns for use on horseback. The word pistolese does exist, as the old form of pistoiese, and it also meant a short, broad, double-edged hunting knife. But the dictionaries do not follow the city. For the Treccani dictionary, pistola comes from the French pistole, via the German Pistole, and perhaps originally from the Czech pištal, “pipe”: the name of the hand cannons of the 15th-century Hussite wars. English took pistolet from French around 1570, and the etymology is openly called disputed. Pistoia is in the running, but has not won yet.

📍 Pistoia →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 7

7 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on October 2

Santi Angeli Custodi 3

Priolo GargalloSicily CentalloPiedmont Fondachelli-FantinaSicily

Other saints of the day 4

Morrone del Sannio · Molise DruentoBeata Vergine del santo Rosario · Piedmont Villa CastelliSacro cuore di Gesù e Madonna della Fontana · Puglia Surbosant'Oronzo vescovo e martire · Puglia
Patron saint festival 📍 Surbo

Feast of Saint Orontius

📅 Every year, on 2 October

On 2 October Surbo celebrates its patron Saint Orontius, bishop and martyr; the village also preserves the Torre dei Cavallari.