The Italian Almanac for October 8: stories and curiosities

Bell-tower rivalries

The Chianti Black Rooster: a border between Firenze and Siena settled by a cockerel kept hungry

The story goes that Firenze and Siena divided the Chianti hills of Tuscany with a race: two horsemen leaving their cities at first cockcrow, the border falling where they met. Siena picked a plump white rooster; Firenze a black cockerel kept hungry, which crowed before dawn. The Florentine rider got almost to the walls of the rival city: the meeting is said to have happened near Fonterutoli, today a hamlet of Castellina in Chianti. The black rooster on a gold field was already the emblem of the Lega del Chianti, set up by Firenze in 1384; since 1924 it has been the mark of the Consorzio, Italy's first wine-protection body.

📍 Discover Castellina in Chianti

Today's tidbits

It started here 1961

From Agordo, population 4,051 in the province of Belluno, come the glasses of half the world

Leonardo Del Vecchio, a Milanese raised in the Martinitt orphanage and a workshop boy at fifteen, went up to Agordo in 1961, in the Agordino valley of the Veneto, and opened a frame factory with two partners from Cadore: fourteen employees, name Luxottica. Then Luxottica bought Ray-Ban in 1999 and Oakley in 2007, made under licence the eyewear of Armani, Chanel, Prada and Versace, and in 2018 merged with France's Essilor: over 150 countries. Del Vecchio died in 2022, by Forbes' reckoning Italy's second-richest man; Agordo remains the heart of Italy's eyewear district, with the main plants still there.

📍 Agordo →

Impossible geography

The Timavo, the river that runs 39 kilometres underground and resurfaces at Duino Aurisina

It rises in Croatia, from a karst spring below Monte Nevoso, flows through Slovenia under the name Reka and at the caves of San Canziano vanishes into the rock. From there it runs in the dark for about 39 kilometres, until at San Giovanni di Duino, in the municipality of Duino Aurisina near Trieste, in Italy's far north-east, it comes back to daylight from four springs; a couple of kilometres more and it empties into the Gulf of Trieste. All told, 89 kilometres, of which Italy sees just two. Virgil names it three times, in the eighth Eclogue, the Georgics and the Aeneid, where he has it burst from a mountain through nine mouths.

📍 Duino Aurisina →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 6

6 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on October 8

Santa Reparata 3

CasoliAbruzzo NarboliaSardinia Aquila d'ArrosciaLiguria

Other saints of the day 3

Villa San Secondo · Piedmont Monterchisan Simeone · Tuscany FrattaminoreSan Simeone il Vecchio o profeta · Campania

Patron saint festival 📍 Narbolia

Feast of Saint Reparata

📅 Every year, on 8 October

On 8 October Narbolia celebrates its patron Saint Reparata; a month earlier residents gather wood in the Is Arenas pine forest for the "su espuru" bonfire, lit on the eve of the feast.

Patron saint festival 📍 Frattaminore

Feast of Saint Simeon

📅 Every year, on 8 October

On 8 October Frattaminore celebrates its patron Saint Simeon the Elder, also called the prophet; the town also hosts the Parco Urbano "Publio Virgilio Marone".

Patron saint festival 📍 Monterchi

Feast of Saint Simeon

📅 Every year, on 8 October

On 8 October Monterchi celebrates its patron Saint Simeon; the town hosts the Museo della Madonna del Parto, dedicated to the famous fresco by Piero della Francesca.

Patron saint festival 📍 Pontedera

Saint Faustinus, patron whose relics arrived from Rome in the 17th century

📅 Every year, on the second Thursday of October

Pontedera celebrates Saint Faustinus, a 3rd-century martyr, on the second Thursday of October; his relics, translated from Rome in the 17th century, are kept in the town's cathedral, where the patronal feast is celebrated every year.

Patron saint festival 📍 Aquila d'Arroscia

Saint Reparata, patroness consecrated precisely on 8 October 1597

📅 Every year, on 8 October

Aquila d'Arroscia celebrates Saint Reparata on 8 October, the very day in 1597 on which her parish church was consecrated; the town also holds the ruins of the Clavesana castle, to which popular legend ties the municipality's own name.