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Alessandria

Provincial capital on the Tanaro, founded in 1168 against Barbarossa, a Savoy stronghold with Bertola's Citadel and the city of Borsalino hats.

Alessandria is a city in south-eastern Piedmont, capital of the province of the same name, lying on the plain to the right of the Tanaro, not far from its confluence with the Bormida, and for a long time an important transport hub.[1] Founded in the 12th century as a fortress-city against the emperor, for centuries it was a border stronghold and later, under the Savoy, the main eastern bulwark of the state whose capital was Turin. In 2020 the municipality had 92,876 inhabitants over 203.5 square kilometres.[1]

A city born against Barbarossa

According to the Treccani Encyclopedia entry, the first nucleus, built between 1164 and 1167 by Guglielmo the Elder, marquis of Monferrato, and called Civitas Nova, received in 1168 the name Alessandria in honour of Pope Alexander III, head of the Lombard League; the nickname “della Paglia” (of the straw) would not come from the straw roofs of the first houses, as tradition holds, but from Palea, the ancient name of the area.[1] The Enciclopedia Italiana of 1929 insists on the federal origin: the city was born from the union of pre-existing communities such as Rovereto, Bergoglio, Marengo and Gamondio, and the pope's name sealed the alliance of the communes against imperial authority.[2]

The test came at once. In 1174-75 Frederick I Barbarossa and the marquis Guglielmo the Elder of Monferrato besieged it for six months without managing to take it.[2] Later left isolated by the compromise between the League and the emperor, in 1183 Alessandria chose to submit to the Empire to escape the ambitions of the neighbouring marquises, and Barbarossa imposed on it the name Cesaria, which protected it for fifteen years.[1][2]

From the free commune to the Savoy

A free commune from 1198, the city spent the 14th century amid the struggles of Guelphs and Ghibellines, passed under various lordships, including that of Robert of Anjou, and in 1348 fell into the hands of the Visconti, tying its fate for centuries to the Duchy of Milan.[1][2] After the long Spanish period, in 1707 it was ceded to duke Vittorio Amedeo II: from that moment Alessandria entered the state of the House of Savoy, later the Kingdom of Sardinia.[2]

The Citadel

The new sovereign wanted a fortress on the Tanaro equal to the frontier with Lombardy. The task went to the military engineer Ignazio Bertola, who drew the first designs in 1727; the work lasted about fourteen years and by 1745 it was complete.[3] Bertola drew on the experience of the siege of Turin of 1706, during which he had seen at first hand the limits of the old Turin citadel.[3] The result was an irregular hexagon with six bastions, deliberately distorted to strengthen the eastern and western fronts, while the side facing the city was defended by the river; a barrage work allowed water from the Tanaro to be run into the moats, and the marshy ground of the Bergoglio district was consolidated with rows of wooden piles with iron tips linked by chains.[3] The municipality describes it thus:

«The Citadel of Alessandria is one of the grandest European monuments in the field of permanent fortification of the 18th century.»

Comune di Alessandria, fact sheet "La Cittadella"

After Marengo, Napoleon had almost all the Piedmontese fortresses demolished, but spared the Citadel, destined to become the main French defensive work in the Po plain[3]: the engineering general Chasseloup-Laubat worked on it from 1803 to 1814, spending 30 of the 55 million planned.[2] In March 1821 the fortress was the main stage of the constitutional uprisings: the garrison's soldiers seized it and, as the municipal fact sheet recalls, “the constitutionalists raised the Carbonari tricolour over the Citadel, proclaiming the Spanish Constitution and declaring war on Austria”.[3] Alessandria was also the centre of the Mazzinian conspiracy of 1833.[1] The uninterrupted presence of a military garrison preserved the complex: decommissioned by the Ministry of Defence in 2007 and entrusted in 2016 to the Superintendency, it can now be visited and the FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) organizes guided tours there.[3]

Marengo, 14 June 1800

On the plain of Marengo, at the gates of the city, Napoleon Bonaparte won the battle of 14 June 1800. Already in 1801 the municipality erected a commemorative column, topped by a wrought-iron eagle, at the junction of the roads to Spinetta and Castelceriolo; in 1814 the Austrian general Nugent carried it off as a war trophy to his villa at Tersatto, and it was put back in its place only in 1922.[2] In the Napoleonic era the city centre also changed: today's cathedral arose on the site of the ancient church of San Marco after the French government demolished the old cathedral of San Pietro in 1805.[2] Among the eighteenth-century monuments, the Enciclopedia Italiana notes Palazzo Ghilini, a brick building by Benedetto Alfieri, and the town hall, begun in 1770 by the architect Andrea Caselli and completed in 1824 by Lorenzo Valizzone.[2]

The city of hats

Alessandria's name in the world is tied to a hat. Giuseppe Borsalino, born in 1834 in Pecetto di Valenza, returned to the city in 1857 and started his manufacturing business there with his brother: in 1861 it employed 60 workers who produced 120 hats a day; by around 1896 the workers numbered about a thousand and the hats 1,360 a day; in 1900 annual production was close to 750,000 pieces, of which 450,000 were exported.[4] Before the law required it, Borsalino set up a pension fund, an accident fund and a welfare fund for his employees, as well as a school for workers' children.[4] Alongside the hat factories, in the early twentieth century the city's economy included railway and mechanical workshops, factories making iron beds and fertilizers, and cotton mills.[2] Today the Borsalino Museum, in corso Cento Cannoni, displays over two thousand hats in three areas, “Antica Casa”, “Manifattura” and “Galleria”, telling a story that starts in 1857.[5] In the surrounding hills, towards the Monferrato, winegrowing is still very much alive.[1]

The 1994 flood and the city today

On Sunday 6 November 1994 the Tanaro overflowed and the water reached places it had never reached before: the Orti district, the area around piazzetta della Lega and the San Michele suburb were hit, with a heavy toll of victims. Weeks of mud followed, months of the smell of diesel fuel in houses and years of paperwork for compensation; out of the tragedy, however, the city's civil protection service was also born.[6]

Since 1998 Alessandria has been one of the three seats, with Novara and Vercelli, of the University of Eastern Piedmont.[1] Among its best-known native sons is Umberto Eco, who in his intellectual autobiography traced a lesson in method back to the city:

«I was born in Alessandria, in the north-west of the Italian peninsula. From the character of my fellow citizens I learned the virtue of scepticism.»

Umberto Eco, Autobiografia intellettuale

The quote is reported by the Fondazione Umberto Eco in its biography of the writer.[7]

Pages linking here

Chronology

  • — The carabinieri of Alessandria's Reparto Operativo dismantle the so-called “banda dei tir”, specialized in stealing semi-trailers and containers between Piedmont and Lombardy for resale in Campania: eight people under investigation for theft, handling stolen goods and money laundering, two of whom were jailed and one placed under house arrest. → ANSA Piemonte Quotidiano Piemontese

Sources

  1. Treccani
  2. Treccani - Enciclopedia Italiana —
  3. Comune di Alessandria
  4. Treccani - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  5. Comune di Alessandria
  6. Il Piccolo (Alessandria) — 6 November 2019
  7. Fondazione Umberto Eco

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