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🔔 The Italian Almanac

October 5

Stories and curiosities for October 5, from the Italy of a thousand bell towers.

Vanished Italy 📅 1582

October 5, 1582 never happened: the calendar was worked out by a physician from Cirò

In 1582, in Italy, Spain and Portugal, Thursday October 4 was followed directly by Friday October 15: ten days struck out to bring the spring equinox back to March 21. The reform decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in the bull Inter gravissimas of February 24, 1582 rested on the calculations of Luigi Lilio, a physician, astronomer and mathematician born, by tradition, in 1510 in Cirò, in Calabria at the toe of Italy. Lilio never saw his calendar in use: he died between 1574 and 1576, and it was his brother Antonio who presented the project to the papal commission. A crater on the Moon now bears his name, and since 2012 Calabria has marked March 21 as Calendar Day.

📍 Discover Cirò

Today's tidbits

Place names

There is no Saint Remo: the saint behind Sanremo is Romolo, a bishop of Genoa

No saint named Remo exists. The Roman town on the Ligurian Riviera was Civitas Matuciana; with Christianity it became Civitas Sancti Romuli, after san Romolo, a fifth-century bishop of Genoa who lived as a hermit in the woods inland. Ligurian speech turned Romolo into Remo: “Romu” slides into “Rœmu” and then Remo, and in documents from the 14th to the 17th century both forms appear equally often. The spelling was fought over until yesterday: a 1928 royal decree fixed “San Remo” as two words, the town insisted for decades on the joined form, and only between 1991 and 2002, with the municipal statute, did Sanremo in a single word become the only correct spelling.

📍 Sanremo →
It started here 1933

The moka pot was born on Lake Orta: Omegna, 1933, a coffee maker copied from the laundry tub

Alfonso Bialetti had opened an aluminium workshop in 1919 at Crusinallo, today part of Omegna, on Lake Orta in Piedmont. In 1933 he came out with the coffee maker that would retire the Neapolitan flip pot: an octagonal aluminium body with a bakelite handle. Legend says he got the idea watching his wife do the washing with a lisciveuse, a tub in which steam pressure pushed soapy water up through the clothes. The name comes from Mokha, the Yemeni port famous for its coffee. The little man with the moustache arrived in 1953, drawn by Paul Campani with Bialetti's son Renato. Over 320 million made, and one in the MoMA in New York.

📍 Omegna →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 6

6 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on October 5

San Placido 2

Castel di LucioSicily TorrebrunaAbruzzo

San Placido martire 2

Poggio ImperialePuglia MontecarottoMarche

Other saints of the day 2

Fiumicinosant'Ippolito · Lazio Biancavilla[S. Maria dell'Elemosina, S. Placido ab. e m. S. Zenone m.] · Sicily
Patron saint festival 📍 Fiumicino

Feast of Saint Hippolytus

📅 Every year, on 5 October

On 5 October Fiumicino celebrates its patron Saint Hippolytus; the town also hosts the Museum of the Ships, home to five Roman ships found during the airport's construction works.

Patron saint festival 📍 Montecarotto

Feast of Saint Placidus

📅 Every year, on 5 October

On 5 October Montecarotto celebrates its patron Saint Placidus, in a feast dating back to 1686; since 1982 it has been preceded by a market fair with roasted chestnuts and mulled wine.

Patron saint festival 📍 Olevano Romano

Feast of Saint Placidus

📅 Every year, on 5 October

On 5 October Olevano Romano celebrates Saint Placidus, one of the town's two patrons alongside Saint Margaret, on 20 July, to whom the main church is dedicated.

Patron saint festival 📍 Poggio Imperiale

Feast of Saint Placidus

📅 Every year, on 5 October

On 5 October Poggio Imperiale celebrates its patron Saint Placidus the Martyr; the town also preserves the Sanctuary of San Nazario, near the spring of the same name.

Patron saint festival 📍 Torrebruna

Feast of Saint Placidus

📅 Every year, on 5 October

On 5 October Torrebruna celebrates its patron Saint Placidus; with fewer than a thousand residents it is one of the smallest municipalities in the province of Chieti.

Patron saint festival 📍 San Donà di Piave

Our Lady of the Rosary, patron of a fair linked to the victory of Lepanto

📅 Every year, on the Monday after the first Sunday of October, with the Fiera del Rosario the preceding week

San Donà di Piave celebrates Our Lady of the Rosary on the Monday after the first Sunday of October, with the traditional Fiera del Rosario, popularly known as «Le Fiere»; some trace its origins to the victory of Lepanto, consecrated precisely to the Virgin of the Rosary.