Castelfranco Emilia claims the primal scene of Italian gastronomy: here, legend tells, an innkeeper peeped through a keyhole at a noblewoman — some say Venus herself — and drew inspiration for the tortellino, the navel most contested between Modena and Bologna. The September festival and the "traditional tortellino" celebrate the myth with Emilian seriousness.
On the Via Emilia, the town keeps a parish church with a Guercino and the Napoleonic urban fort. A middle land between two capitals of taste, it made the threshold its identity: eating well here is definitional — and the debate is even better.
The Castelfranco Emilia guide
Near Castelfranco Emilia
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
