Saint Blaise, patron of Castelbelforte
📅 Every year, on 3 February
Castelbelforte celebrates Saint Blaise on 3 February.
The official name celebrates a castle that no longer exists, and the dialect remembers two that were there before. In Mantuan the village is called I Castèi, that is the castles, as the area was already called in documents of the eleventh century: there were two of them, divided by the Essere torrent that runs through the village, and they stood on a border land long disputed between Verona and Mantua.
In the fifteenth century the Gonzaga, having got the upper hand, built a massive castle here to make that border safe, and around it grew a settlement called Bonafisso, which at the beginning of the sixteenth century took the name of Due Castelli. In 1680 the name was changed again, to Castelbelforte: a homage to the building that had managed to stand up to invaders. The castle survived intact until 1800, when its tower was pulled down, and today no trace of it remains. Three thousand and sixty-nine inhabitants in the province of Mantua, a little north-east of the city.
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📅 Every year, on 3 February
Castelbelforte celebrates Saint Blaise on 3 February.
White and yellow flour, almonds, butter and sugar, broken by hand: sbrisolona is Mantova's cake, already served at the Gonzaga court.
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