Gorgonzola is named after a town near Milan, but its capital is Novara
Italy's most famous blue cheese takes its name from Gorgonzola, a small town just east of Milan, where the historical record thickens from the fifteenth century onward; some push its birth all the way back to 879. Over the last century, however, the area around Novara, across the border in Piedmont, became its principal producer. The Lombard town keeps the name, Piedmont keeps the wheels: a bell-tower feud that gets served with the cheese course.