MILAN – I am due the realities of the province of Alessandria that appear in the new 2024/2025 edition of the prestigious guide “Historic Places of Italy”. It’s about the Barberis Pastry Shop of Valenza and of Corona Restaurant of Saint Sebastian Curone.
Overall they are good 23 the Piedmontese locations mentioned in the volume. With two new entries for our region: the Gelateria Pepino 1884 in Turin and the Caffè delle Rose Bistrot restaurant (since 1900) in Verbania.
Local: families as the cornerstone
In total they are 200 the locations, for an average of 175 years of activity behind them, contained in the 46th edition of the volume. Which, every two years, encompasses Italian excellence in terms of hospitality and welcome.
“Our association was founded in 1976 with the aim of protect e valorise the immense national heritage of locations of historical importance. – explains Enrico Magnes, president of Locali Storici d’Italia – 70 years of activity are not enough to become part of this circuit. These realities must represent a community center historical and cultural significance within the community in which they are located.”
The 2024/2025 edition has as its common thread the importance of families that have given (and continue to give) life to these locations. We wanted to give space to the relevance of the people, to their commitment and constant work to pass them down from generation to generation, modernizing the proposal but without distorting it. “These are activities that have gone through periods, even difficult ones, throughout history. But that they managed to lay the foundations for Pass the witness to future generations” concludes Magnes.
Excellence “made in Alessandria”
As regards the Barberis pastry shop, we read: “A nineteenth-century café, then a confectionery with a liqueur shop and “Supplier to the Royal House of Savoy”, Barberis is considered the temple of sweetness of Valencia. Historic meeting point of the great goldsmith art families. In 2006 he had to leave his original headquarters. In the new premises it preserves the twentieth century counter, the elegant high boiserie furnishings that date back to the foundation and continues, with passion, the tradition of original recipes elaborated in over a century of activity. Including the tartufata, the amaretti, the savoiardi and the panfrutto, a butter-free dessert invented in wartime”.
While the Corona restaurant is defined as an “inn on the ancient “Salt Road” which, until the eighteenth century, connected Genoa to northern Italy for the transport of the precious food preservative. It is always of the same family from the origins. In the mid-nineteenth century, the great-grandfather Giovanni he was the general’s sniper-cook Lamarmora in the Crimean War. They frequented it D’Annunziothe general Cadornathe publisher Memoriesthe biker Couples which was from the area. Piedmontese-Ligurian tradition and a beautiful diploma from the Queen of England from 1857”.
Must read… to the end
The guide, both in Italian and English, is available free of charge in all the historic venues that are part of it. Or it can be downloaded from the app or requested directly from the association. Each venue is accompanied not by a photo, but by illustrations created by Gianni Renna e Paolo Aiello which recall a retro atmosphere. 280 pages in which you can also find a curious appendix which contains all the most curious records of the individual locations.
this is a test{“il-piccolo”:”Il Piccolo”, “tortona”:”Tortona”, “valenza”:”Valenza”}
