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🔔 The Italian Almanac

October 26 Today

Stories and curiosities for October 26, from the Italy of a thousand bell towers.

Vanished Italy 📅 452

Aquileia was the fourth city of Italy in AD 395; today it has 3,097 residents and the largest early Christian mosaic in the West

Founded as a Roman colony in 181 BC, Aquileia became the capital of the Tenth Region, Venetia et Histria, a trading centre of close to 100,000 people in the 2nd century; when Theodosius died in 395 it was the ninth city of the Empire and the fourth in Italy, after Rome, Milan and Capua. On 18 July 452 Attila broke into the city and laid it waste; salt, it is said, was scattered over the ruins. Today the town, in Friuli in the province of Udine, has 3,097 inhabitants, and inside the basilica the floor laid for Bishop Theodore in the early 4th century covers more than 760 square metres: the oldest Christian mosaic and the largest in the West, a UNESCO site since 1998.

📍 Discover Aquileia

Today's tidbits

Busted myths

Sambuca liqueur does not come from Sambuca di Sicilia: it was born in Civitavecchia, while the Sicilian town was founded by Arabs around 830

The anise liqueur takes its name from the elder plant, sambuco in Italian, and its story starts in Civitavecchia, north of Rome, in the late 19th century with Luigi Manzi's Sambuca Manzi; Manzi said he named it after the “sambuchelli”, the water sellers of his home area who carried water and anise to farmhands in the fields. From 1945 Angelo Molinari took it worldwide. Sambuca di Sicilia, in the province of Agrigento, has a different past: Arabs founded it around 830 and called it Zabuth after the emir Al-Zabut, who had a castle built there; its Arab quarter still runs along seven Saracen lanes. Sambuca Zabut from 1864, it has carried its present name since 1923.

📍 Sambuca di Sicilia →
Impossible geography

The wettest place in Italy is Musi, a hamlet of 27 people in the commune of Lusevera: 3,300 millimetres of rain a year

In the upper Torre valley in the province of Udine, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia in Italy's north-east, the territory of Lusevera is ringed on every side by the Musi chain, inside the Julian Prealps nature park. There the hamlet of Musi, twenty-seven residents, collects an average of 3,300 millimetres of precipitation a year, the highest figure in Italy. The whole commune has 618 inhabitants spread over eight hamlets and a language of its own, a Slovene dialect its speakers call po našin, “our way”, still spoken by three quarters of residents in a 1974 estimate and now in steep decline. Water, at Musi, is one thing that never runs short.

📍 Lusevera →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 2

2 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on October 26

Other saints of the day 2

San Demetrio ne' VestiniSan Demetrio · Abruzzo San Demetrio Coronesan Demetrio Megalomartire · Calabria
Patron saint festival Today 📍 Morigerati

Feast of San Demetrio di Tessalonica

📅 Every year, on 26 October and on 26 August

On 26 October and on 26 August Morigerati, a municipality of 699 inhabitants in the province of Salerno, celebrates its patron San Demetrio di Tessalonica.

Patron saint festival Today 📍 Cittadella

Saints Prosdocimus and Donatus, patrons of the walled town

📅 Every year, on the Monday after the fourth Sunday of October

Cittadella celebrates Saints Prosdocimus and Donatus on the Monday after the fourth Sunday of October, in the town's cathedral dedicated to them; the parish church of San Donato, in the hamlet of the same name, was the main place of worship in the area before the cathedral's consecration.