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🔔 The Italian Almanac

September 13

Stories and curiosities for September 13, from the Italy of a thousand bell towers.

Impossible geography 📅 1441

Cospaia, the republic born of a surveying error

In 1441 the border between the Papal States and Florence was drawn along a stream called Rio, but there were two streams of that name, five hundred metres apart. Florence picked the northern one, the pope the southern one, and the strip in between belonged to no one. Cospaia, today a hamlet of San Giustino in Umbria, central Italy, made the most of it for 385 years: no army, no prisons, no customs duties, and some of Italy's first tobacco fields. Independence ended only in 1826, when fourteen representatives signed an act of submission.

📍 Discover San Giustino

Today's tidbits

Italian records

Thirty letters: Italy's longest municipal name

San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore, a village in the province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, holds a record you cannot photograph: at thirty letters, it has the longest municipal name in the country. The name proved so unwieldy that some payment operations cannot be processed at all, forcing taxpayers onto other channels. The village sits between the Pescara and Orta rivers, in the foothills of the Maiella massif, partly inside the national park: serious mountain country, with a name to match.

📍 San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore →
Saying of the day

The grape and the fig hang: September in one Tuscan proverb

Tuscan farmers wrapped the whole month into one line: Settembre, l'uva e il fico pende — in September, the grape and the fig hang ripe on the branch. The saying, recorded among Tuscan proverbs, promises nothing and describes everything. In mid-September it comes literally true in the vineyards around Greve in Chianti, the wine town on the road between Florence and Siena, where the harvest still sets the village calendar. October will bring the new must to the cellars, but that belongs to another proverb.

📍 Greve in Chianti →

🎉 Celebrations today in… 3

3 towns with a guide celebrate their patron saint on September 13

Other saints of the day 3

Monterealebeato Andrea da Montereale · Abruzzo Furcibeato Angelo da Furci · Abruzzo Rocca d'Arcesan Bernardo pellegrino · Lazio
Patron saint festival 📍 Furci

Feast of Blessed Angelo of Furci

📅 Every year, on 13 September

On 13 September Furci celebrates Blessed Angelo of Furci; the village dedicates three feast days to him each year, on 6 February, 17 May and 13 September.

Patron saint festival In 321 days 📍 Ardauli

Feast of the Beata Vergine del Buoncammino

📅 Every year, on the second Monday of September

On the second Monday of September Ardauli, a municipality of 946 inhabitants in the province of Oristano, celebrates its patroness the Beata Vergine del Buoncammino.

Patron saint festival In 321 days 📍 Chieri

Our Lady of Grace, patron of a town once divided between the Militi and the Society of Saint George

📅 Every year, on the second Monday of September

Chieri celebrates Our Lady of Grace on the second Monday of September; the town was long divided between the Militi, noble families devoted to Saint William of Aquitaine, and the Society of Saint George, protector of the people and of trade and crafts, whose symbols merged into today's town coat of arms.