This too is a free town, and for the same reason as Castelfranco: in 1185 the comune of Verona founded it as a borgo franco, one of those new villages granted fiscal and legal franchises to draw people in, bring the land under cultivation and hold the territory. The Scaliger castle, the head of the defensive system they called the Serraglio, still commands the main street with its battlements. But Villafranca is known for something else: on the eleventh of July 1859, in a palace that stands today in via Pace, Napoleon III and Franz Joseph signed the armistice that ended the second war of independence.
The whole Risorgimento passed through here. In eighteen forty-eight the town housed the Piedmontese headquarters in an inn, and from a palace general de Laugier watched the battle of Custoza turn into a defeat; in fifty-nine it was the Austrians' turn, with the emperor in person; and in the third war of independence, at the town's edge, the Italian infantry under prince Umberto formed a square and threw back the charges of the Austrian cavalry. From that Villafranca is also called the town of the Square, and there is an obelisk to remember it. But there is a sweeter way of telling the same story. In 1842 Giovanni Fantoni opened the café in the centre and invented the recipe and the shape of the sfogliatine; his grandson Marcello carried on, and let history pass through pastry: he baked the Cake of Peace and the Umberto Biscuits, in honour of the prince who had fought where the obelisk now stands, and for the Fiume enterprise he distilled a light herb liqueur he called Acqua di Fiume — D'Annunzio wrote him a letter of thanks. That liqueur is still made by hand, and sold together with the sfogliatine. Verona, Garda and Custoza with its white wine are all a quarter of an hour away.
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📅 Every year, on 29 June, with the ancient fair of Saints Peter and Paul
Villafranca di Verona celebrates Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, the day of the ancient fair named after them; the town's cathedral, inspired by Andrea Palladio's design for the Basilica del Santissimo Redentore, is the most important monument in town after the castle.
Eight points, powdered sugar like snow on a mountain: pandoro was born in Verona in 1894, patented by Domenico Melegatti.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
