A Small Mythology of Alessandria
A day among stones, saints, goblins, dragons and other stories of a city forgotten by tourism
Alessandria, a city to be discovered
At a time when Italy's great art cities are struggling to defend themselves from mass tourism, there are places facing exactly the opposite problem.
Alessandria is not a city of great monuments, nor an obligatory stop on the Italian tourist circuit, and it is certainly not going through one of the best periods in its history. Precisely for this reason, it preserves a surprising number of stories, curious places, legends and traces of the past, hidden in the city and in the surrounding villages.
This is not intended to be a guide to Alessandria's most beautiful monuments (which can easily be found on other websites), but a small urban mythology: an itinerary between history and legend, archaeology and folklore, saints, fantastic creatures and places with mysterious powers.
One day will be enough to encounter some of them.
A city older than the city
The Alessandria area has been inhabited since at least the Neolithic period and preserves traces of a history much older than the present city. Before Alessandria there were Ligurian and Celtic settlements; in Roman times important centres and communication routes developed here, including Forum Fulvii, in what is now Villa del Foro, founded on a pre-existing Celto-Ligurian trading settlement.
Alessandria itself is a relatively young city. It was founded in 1168, during the struggles between the communes of the Lombard League and the Empire, through the union of populations from several settlements in the surrounding area: Bergoglio (demolished in 1700 to build the Citadel), Gamondio (today Castellazzo), Marengo, Rovereto and other centres.
In the following centuries it became one of the most important fortified cities in the Cisalpine area because of its strategic position, passing under several different rulers. In the nineteenth century, the railway transformed it into one of northern Italy's main communication hubs, encouraging the development of workshops, industries and an extensive tram network.
Beneath these cities — Roman, medieval, fortified and industrial — others survive, much harder to see.
These are the ones we are going to look for.
1. Santa Maria di Castello — the city before the city
In the heart of Borgo Rovereto stands the oldest church in Alessandria (Piazza Santa Maria di Castello, 13), built on an area inhabited long before the city's foundation. Beneath the present building, the remains of an eighth-century pre-Romanesque church and a later Romanesque structure can still be seen; the first is said to have been built using stones from a mysterious fortification that once stood on the banks of the Tanaro.
Today, besides these traces of its very ancient history, the church preserves important works of art, including paintings by the Moncalvo and an extraordinary terracotta Deposition.
2. Gagliaudo and Saint Francis's wolf — two stories in the square
In the heart of the city, beside the cathedral (Piazza Giovanni XXIII), two of the most curious figures in Alessandria's traditions can be encountered. Gagliaudo Aulari, the cunning peasant who, according to legend, saved Alessandria during the imperial siege by showing the enemy a well-fed cow, now watches over the square from his pedestal. But it is said that at night he climbs down from his statue, wanders through the city and gets up to all sorts of mischief.
Not far away, the memory of Saint Francis and the wolf tells of a beast that terrorised the countryside around Alessandria and that the saint supposedly managed to tame.
Two very different stories, but both connected with a city where, at least according to tradition, extraordinary humans and animals continued to live side by side.
3. The dragons of Alessandria — creatures of stone and memory
At the Sale d'Arte, two stone dragons face each other on capitals recovered from the medieval cloister of the Carmine church (Via Guasco, 11). But they are not the city's only dragons: in the 1990s, during excavations of the old cathedral destroyed in the Napoleonic period, two more magnificent dragons carved on a capital were found; the capital is now preserved at the Sale d'Arte (Via Niccolò Machiavelli, 13).
According to a suggestive interpretation, these two dragons may be the origin of the two griffins on Alessandria's coat of arms, symbolically associated with the two rivers (Tanaro and Bormida) that surround and protect the city.
4. The Sale d'Arte — Arthur, Lancelot and a forgotten medieval story
The Sale d'Arte in Alessandria (Via Machiavelli, 13) house one of the city's most surprising treasures: a cycle of 15 late-fourteenth-century frescoes (LINK) depicting the stories of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere.
The frescoes originally decorated a large reception hall in the medieval tower of Frugarolo, a few kilometres from Alessandria. Hidden for centuries beneath a layer of plaster, they were discovered in 1971, detached from the tower and, after a long restoration, finally put on public display in 1999.
The cycle mainly tells of the adventures and loves of Lancelot, with scenes drawn from the Lancelot du Lac tradition: duels, enchanted castles, Guinevere, the Lady of the Lake and the mysterious Prince Galehaut. The inscriptions accompanying many of the scenes are still legible.
A place not to miss for anyone looking for the most unusual side of Alessandria: here, in a Piedmontese city, one encounters one of the rare large secular Arthurian cycles to have survived from the Middle Ages.
5. The Citadel — the enormous fortress and the sorcerer
Built by the House of Savoy in the eighteenth century to a design by Ignazio Bertola, the Citadel (Via Pavia, 2) was built precisely on the site of the old village of Bergoglio, completely erasing the settlement. It is one of Europe's most important early-modern fortifications: the only lowland fortress built by the Savoy in the eighteenth century, and still preserved within its original landscape setting.
Its gigantic hexagonal plan, with six bastions, galleries, casemates, moats and earthworks, covers about 20 hectares and still retains its eighteenth-century layout. A true military city almost entirely intact.
Among these bastions, the memory of the Mascone (Maschilie di Masca, sorcerer, magician) of Alessandria also survives: a figure from local folklore who, according to tradition, wandered among the old walls and the groves that once surrounded the city, performing mysterious rituals of fisica, that is, magic. (LINK)
6. Porta Maricia — traces of the Marici
It no longer exists, but the Porta Maricia appears on old maps of Alessandria (number 17 in the image below), one of the gates in the city's walls. Its location can be placed, with reasonable approximation, near the junction of Via Tortona and Spalto Marengo; it was demolished along with the rest of the city walls during the twentieth century.
The name is particularly interesting because it could preserve the memory of the Marici, an ancient Gallic population mentioned in Roman sources and settled in the area between present-day Alessandria and the Pavia area.
Traces of this ancient territory can still be seen in place names such as Pietra Marazzi, the ancient Petra Mariciorum, while Bosco Marengo is connected with the Latin Lucus Maricorum, the grove of the Marici. Pavia also has another Porta Marica.
Thus a vanished gate becomes a small trace of a people who lived here more than two thousand years ago.
7. The goblin of Via Vescovado — a creature hidden in the city
Among the lesser-known stories of Alessandria is that of a small creature which, according to popular tradition, lived near Via Vescovado. A goblin, or rather a small kobold, belonging to those old stories of houses, cellars and narrow streets in which the boundary between reality and superstition was much thinner than it is today.
It is a tiny, almost forgotten story, traceable only through a few documents available at the State Archives, but precisely for this reason it is perfect for this small mythology: there is no great monument to look for, you simply need to know where to look.
8. The magic stones — Saint Varena and the storm
Just outside the city, Alessandria's mythology continues through stones to which tradition has attributed particular powers.
At Villa del Foro, on the church of Santa Varena (Via Maestra, 33), the so-called Stone of Saint Varena can still be seen. According to legend, it was an ancient pagan altar (probably a menhir or part of a dolmen) which the saint carried on her shoulders and on which she indicated that the new place of worship should be built.
On the other side of the city, in the hills of Valle San Bartolomeo (SP79, 87, 15122 Alessandria AL), stands the Storm Stone (LINK), a large standing stone (menhir) which popular tradition associated with the masche, the witches of Piedmont, who were said to use it in rituals to summon storms. Apparently there were once several such stones, but they were quarried and used to build houses in the area.
Two very different stones, but both transformed by popular memory into something more than simple stones.
9. Cristo and the ancient Statielli
There is another story that can be read directly on the city's map.
Alessandria's large southern district is called Cristo, a seemingly modern name which, according to a curious interpretation, may preserve a deformation of the ancient Carystum, the city of the Statielli, a Ligurian-Celtic population now identified with present-day Acqui Terme. A documentary (LINK) and a theatrical work by Claudio Braggio have been based on this hypothesis.
It is an etymological hypothesis that should not be presented as a certainty, but it adds another suggestion to our search: beneath the name of a modern working-class district there may perhaps survive an echo of a world more than two thousand years old.
10. The city of trains and trams
The final stop takes us back to a much more recent past.
https://alessandriatram.blogspot.com/
In the nineteenth century Alessandria became one of Italy's major railway hubs, and its position between Turin, Genoa, Milan and the Ligurian port made it an important centre of transportation and industrial development.
But perhaps the most curious part is the one that has almost completely disappeared: Alessandria had an extensive urban and interurban tram network. The lines connected the city with Sale, Casale Monferrato, Marengo, Mandrogne and other towns in the province. The urban network, the only one in Piedmont apart from Turin, was electrified in 1912 and had two lines connecting the city centre with the Cristo and Orti districts.
More information can be found here: https://alessandriatram.blogspot.com/
Today, photographs, old maps and a few traces in street names are what remain of the trams, but there are also some tangible traces: above all, the electric tram depot (1912), externally preserved (today a Penny Market: Viale Milite Ignoto, 24), and the overhead-line poles along the station avenue and on Via Mazzini.
There is also this invisible part of the city: a city of industry that for a time ran on rails through the medieval and fortified city.
Useful addresses
- Santa Maria di Castello — Piazza Santa Maria di Castello, 13
- Cathedral / Gagliaudo and Saint Francis's wolf — Piazza Giovanni XXIII
- Sale d'Arte — Via Niccolò Machiavelli, 13
- Citadel — Via Pavia, 2
- Porta Maricia / Marenga — area around the junction of Via Tortona and Spalto Marengo
- Stone of Saint Varena — Via Maestra, 33, Villa del Foro
- Storm Stone — SP79, Valle San Bartolomeo
- Electric tram depot — Viale Milite Ignoto, 24
Online further reading
- Alessandria Tram — https://alessandriatram.blogspot.com/
- The Mascone of Alessandria — LINK
- The Storm Stone — LINK
- The Stone of Saint Varena — LINK
- The Arthurian cycle at the Sale d'Arte — LINK
