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Alba

Town in the Langhe, in the province of Cuneo: the ancient Alba Pompeia, the twenty-three partisan days of 1944, white truffles and Ferrero.

Alba is a town in the province of Cuneo, in southern Piedmont, considered the capital of the Langhe. Heir to the Roman municipium of Alba Pompeia, a free commune in the Middle Ages and later a Savoy city, in the twentieth century it became a name known around the world for three different reasons: white truffles, the twenty-three days of partisan freedom in 1944 recounted by Beppe Fenoglio, and the confectionery company Ferrero, which was founded here and is still headquartered here.

Alba Pompeia and the medieval commune

The name of the Roman city, Alba Pompeia, appears in Pliny and in Ptolemy; according to the Enciclopedia Italiana the first term is perhaps of Ligurian origin. Alba was a Roman municipium and was the birthplace of the emperor Publius Helvius Pertinax; remains from that era include a fortified gate and brick walls.[1]

After Lombard rule the city organized itself into a commune: consuls are documented from 1179, the podestà from 1194. The following centuries were marked by rivalry with Asti and by a continuous change of hands: in 1356 Alba submitted to the marquis of Monferrato, Giovanni II Paleologo, and was then contested by the Visconti, the French and the Spanish, until the treaty of Cherasco of 6 April 1631 brought it definitively into the state of the House of Savoy.[1] The cathedral of San Lorenzo, a Lombard Gothic building of 1486 entirely rebuilt between 1861 and 1871 by the architect Arborio Mella, preserves in its choir fifteenth-century carved and inlaid stalls and the tomb of the humanist bishop Marco Girolamo Vida.[1]

The twenty-three days of 1944

From 10 October to 2 November 1944 Alba was in the hands of the partisans: the Gazzetta d'Alba remembers it as the first free city of northern Italy, even though, unlike Ossola, Montefiorino or Monferrato, it did not give rise to a partisan republic.[2] Among the partisans was Beppe Fenoglio, born in Alba on 1 March 1922, a pupil at the city's high school under Pietro Chiodi and Leonardo Cocito, who took to the hills after 8 September 1943.[3] In 1952 Fenoglio published, in the “Gettoni” series directed by Elio Vittorini at Einaudi, the book I ventitre giorni della città di Alba, which takes its title from the story dedicated to that episode.[4] Its opening line is among the most quoted in the literature of the Resistance:[2]

«Alba was taken by two thousand men on 10 October and lost by two hundred on 2 November of the year 1944.»

Beppe Fenoglio, I ventitre giorni della città di Alba, 1952

The city was awarded the gold medal for military valour, the seventy-fifth anniversary of which was marked on 13 November 2024 by bringing it back to the town hall; for the eightieth anniversary of the twenty-three days the Centro studi Beppe Fenoglio organized walks through the places of the story, on 13 October and 2 November.[2] From 1947 Fenoglio worked as a foreign correspondent for an Alba wine company, Marengo; he died in Turin during the night between 17 and 18 February 1963.[3]

White truffles and Giacomo Morra

The fame of Alba's white truffle is in large part the work of a hotelier, Giacomo Morra (1889-1963), originally from La Morra. In 1928 he took over the Hotel Savona, then in decline, and made it the centre of a tireless promotional campaign; it was he who invented the Truffle Fair, betting, as the Gazzetta d'Alba puts it, on myth before news coverage.[5] Morra exported truffles under the Tartufalba brand to New York and Tokyo and gave the finest specimens to famous people: in 1951 a truffle of 2,520 grams to the US president Harry Truman, in 1954 one to Marilyn Monroe; in the autumn of 1960 Alfred Hitchcock stayed at the Savona.[5]

The Alba International White Truffle Fair, organized by the Ente Fiera, reaches its 96th edition in 2026 and runs from 10 October to 6 December.[6] In the same period the Palio degli asini (donkey race) is run, contested by nine city districts; in 2025 the race returned to piazza Cagnasso and was won by the Brichet district.[7] The municipality also dedicates a museum to the truffle, the MUDET, in the courtyard of the Maddalena.[8]

The city of Ferrero

Pietro Ferrero opened a pastry workshop in via Rattazzi in 1942; the company was officially founded on 14 May 1946, and moved to via Vivaro to meet demand for Pasta Gianduja, a paste made with gianduia. In February 1946 there were about fifty employees, a hundred the following year. In 1964 Michele Ferrero, son of Pietro, created Nutella; the Alba plant is still the largest in the group.[9]

After the death of Michele Ferrero, on 14 February 2015, on 29 September of the same year piazza Savona was named after him in front of thousands of residents of Alba. The mayor Maurizio Marello explained that the city's most important square could only be dedicated to him, “a concrete sign of gratitude for the man who, more than anyone, freed Alba from poverty”; his son Giovanni replied: “Alba has remained loyal to us for seventy years, we will remain loyal to the city of Alba”.[10]

UNESCO landscape and contemporary art

On 22 June 2014 in Doha the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the vineyard landscapes of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato, the fiftieth Italian site on the list, which includes the production areas of Barolo and Barbaresco and counts among its native grape varieties dolcetto, barbera, nebbiolo and arneis; the mayor of Alba Maurizio Marello was present for the decision, and the candidacy was led by Alba native Roberto Cerrato.[11]

On 17 October 2025 the Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli proclaimed Alba the Italian Capital of Contemporary Art for 2027, preferred over Foligno-Spoleto, Termoli and Pietrasanta by unanimous vote of the jury. The mayor Alberto Gatto dedicated the title to Pinot Gallizio: “This dossier and this title are for Pinot Gallizio”.[12]

Pages linking here

Chronology

  • — The president of the Piedmont Region Alberto Cirio, interviewed on stage in Alba at a La Stampa event, says he would not be scandalized if Iveco were to convert to the production of military vehicles, amid the crisis of the automotive sector. → ANSA Piemonte La Stampa

Related articles: Barolo (wine), Beppe Fenoglio, Langhe, Michele Ferrero, Monferrato

Sources

  1. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana
  2. Gazzetta d'Alba —
  3. Centro Studi Beppe Fenoglio
  4. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  5. Gazzetta d'Alba —
  6. Ente Fiera di Alba
  7. Gazzetta d'Alba — 5 October 2025
  8. Comune di Alba
  9. Ferrero
  10. Gazzetta d'Alba —
  11. Gazzetta d'Alba — 22 June 2014
  12. Gazzetta d'Alba — 17 October 2025

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