The Italian Almanac for September 12: stories and curiosities

Busted myths 📅 1683

No, the cappuccino was not invented in Vienna to honour the friar from Aviano

The legend is irresistible: September 1683, the Ottoman siege of Vienna has just been broken, the retreating Turks leave behind sacks of coffee, and the Viennese name the new brown drink after the order of Father Marco d'Aviano, the Capuchin friar who had rallied the Christian armies. It is a popular myth, with no historical evidence. The friar, though, was real: born in Aviano, in Friuli in Italy's north-east, in 1631, he stood with the troops of the Holy League at Vienna and said mass on the Kahlenberg hill. And the drink's name does owe something to the friars: it recalls the brown of their habit.

📍 Discover Aviano

Today's tidbits

Place names

Pocapaglia: a village name that sounds like an excuse, and ravines dug by the devil

On the map of the Roero hills, in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont, north-west Italy, one name reads like a shrug: Pocapaglia, literally little straw. The village balances on one of the region's strangest landscapes, the Rocche del Roero — deep gorges and gullies cut into the sand about 250,000 years ago, when the capture of the Tanaro river diverted its course and unleashed ferocious erosion. Local folklore prefers a quicker explanation: it was Beelzebub himself who dug through the hills of Pocapaglia for one whole night, and by dawn the ravines were done.

📍 Pocapaglia →

On the table today

The Italia grape of Canicattì: a 1911 Lombard cross that became Sicilian

The variety is called Italia, yet it was not born in Sicily: Luigi and Alberto Pirovano bred it in 1911 in Vaprio d'Adda, near Milan, by crossing Bicane and Muscat Hamburg. Its promised land, however, turned out to be Canicattì, in the basin of the upper Naro river among the fertile hills of inland Agrigento, in southern Sicily: from the 1970s the intensive cultivation of this white table grape reshaped the town's economy, and since 1997 the Uva da tavola di Canicattì has carried the European PGI label of protected geographical indication. In the fruit bowl, a piece of Sicily with Lombard roots.

📍 Canicattì →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 10

10 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on September 12

Santissimo Nome di Maria 3

Capriate San GervasioLombardy BusallaLiguria OsigliaLiguria

Other saints of the day 7

TerzignoImmacolata Concezione · Campania PianezzaMadonna della Stella · Piedmont Casal di PrincipeMaria SS. Preziosa · Campania MareneNatività di Maria Vergine · Piedmont Villar San CostanzoSan Costanzo · Piedmont Metasanta Maria del Lauro · Campania BuonalbergoSantissima Madonna della Macchia · Campania

Patron saint festival In 2 days 📍 Reggio di Calabria

The Madonna della Consolazione

📅 Every year, on the second Saturday of September; Saint George on 23 April

On the second Saturday of September Reggio carries the Vara with the image of the Madonna della Consolazione in procession. The other patron, Saint George, has his date on 23 April.