Vercelli by Lucy Gordan

During the Middle Ages Vercelli was an important stop on the Via Frangigena, the road traveled by pilgrims from Canterbury to Rome. Today its most important claim to fame is as the "Rice Capital of Europe.”

The second smallest of Italy's 103 provinces, in the northwest corner of Piedmont near Lombardy at the foot of the snow-capped Alps, Vercelli produces around 100 varieties and 80% of Europe's rice — white, red (very nutritional), and black (a whole meal crossbreed called "Black Venus,” also very nutritional), with most of the other 20% coming from the Camargue, Andalusia, and around Setubal, the port south of Lisbon.


Gattinara, a favorite wine of Thomas Jefferson, has been made near Vercelli from the Nebbiolo grape since ancient Roman times

Although I've lived in Italy for almost 38 years, Vercelli was one of the few Italian cities I'd never visited until a recent press-trip. The best-known American to precede me was none other than Thomas Jefferson, an admirer of local Gattinara, one of Italy's finest red wines made from the Nebbiolo grape since Roman times. In 1784 he risked the death penalty when he smuggled out some rice plants to Monticello, later writing in a letter (now, among all Jefferson's papers, in the Library of Congress) that the quality of his rice crop from Piedmont was superior to any he knew.


A scene of typical rice fields around Vercelli	Principato of Lucedio where French monks introduced rice cultivation into Italy in the 12th century

Vercelli and environs missed a good chance shortly after World War II to develop its tourism potential. The prize-winning film, "Bitter Rice,” starring Silvana Mangano, was shot just outside at the Tenuta Venerìa di Lignana, founded in 1333 by the Order of Umiliati di S. Cristoforo and managed today by Dr. Guido Sodano, nephew of Angelo Cardinal Sodano(The Holy See’s former Secretary-of-State). It was one of the three rice farms my press trip visited. The others were Tenuta Castello di Desana and Principato di Lucedio, once the Abbey of Lucedio, founded in 1123 on land given by the Marquis Ranieri of Monferrato to a group of Cistercian monks from La Ferté in Provence, who introduced rice cultivation to Vercelli and Italy, but were suppressed on September 10, 1784, by Pope Pius VI after being accused of Satanism. After changing owners several times, since 1937, Principato di Lucedio has again been in possession of the descendants of its original noble owners, and since 2003 is gradually being restored with European funds.

Curious to learn what Vercelli and environs could offer tourists besides Gattinara and panissa, the typical rice dish prepared with pork and local red beans, (click here for recipe) mosquitoes in summer, and fog in winter, I found unexpected surprises for a culture vulture/eno-gastronome.

A Thumbnail History
Originally the chief city of the Libici (a Ligurian tribe) and site of Hannibal's first victory on Italian soil (218 B.C.), Vercellae became a Roman municipium of some importance. It stood at the junction of roads to Eporedia (Ivrea), Novaria (Novara) and Mediolanum (Milan), Laumellum (for Ticino--Switzerland's Italian-speaking canton) and perhaps Hasta (Asti) but wasn’t put on the world map until the Middle Ages — its historical apex — by native son Jacopo Guala Bicchieri. Well-versed in law, he was in charge of many missions for Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). Appointed Cardinal in 1212, he became Papal Delegate to England with full powers in 1216, crowned Henry III on October 28, 1216, and was involved in negotiating and helping to draft the first revised Magna Carta, issued in 1217. That same year he was granted the church of Chesterton near Cambridge. When he returned to Vercelli in 1219 he founded the Abbey of Sant'Andrea, one of the most beautiful and best preserved Romanesque/Gothic monuments in Italy; the nucleus of Vercelli's Studium generale or university; and in 1224 a hospital, still known as the "Scottish hospice,” thereby establishing Vercelli as a destination for English pilgrims on the Via Frangigena from France through the St. Bernard Pass, the Val D'Aosta and Valsesia to Vercelli and then on to Pavia, Piacenza, Fidenza, Potremoli, Massa, Lucca, San Gimigiano, Siena, Bolsena, and Rome. Also known as via francisca, strata pellegrina, strata lombarda, strata publica peregrinorum et mercatorum, this 1,700 km. route — divided into about 20 km. per day — dates to 994 based on an account of his journey back home from Rome by Sigeric, the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was declared a "European Itinerary" by the Council of Europe, 1,000 years later, in 1994.

When Bicchieri died three years later in 1227, he left all his estate, including Chesterton's church and a large library with a number of books in Anglo-Saxon he'd collected while in England, to Vercelli's Abbey of Sant'Andrea. Among his gifts, no

Cardinal Bicchieri, formerly the Papal Delegate to England, founded the Abbey of Sant'Andrea in 1219

longer in the Abbey but in the Cathedral of St. Eusebius's Chapter Library, were for certain two services books and maybe the famous but definitely unglamorous parchment Codex Vercellensis or "Vercelli Book,” (mss. CXVII), made in England before the year 1000.

"Vercelli Book"
I can only say "maybe" when it comes to Bicchieri as the donor of the "Vercelli Book" because, although today it's on display in the right-hand corner of a modest exhibition case in Vercelli's Archdiocese or Cathedral Treasure Museum (Piazza d'Angennes 5, tel. 39-0161-51650, hours: Wednesday 9 AM-12 PM; Saturday 9 AM-12 PM and 3-6 PM; Sunday 3-6 PM, www.tesorodelduomovc.it ), no one really knows how or when it arrived in Vercelli. It was found in the Cathedral's library in 1822 by a German jurist Friedrich Blume and was first described in his Iter Italicum (Berlin and Stettin, 4 vols. 1824-36).

Whatever its provenance, the eleventh-century "Vercelli Book" is only less valuable than the "Exeter Book" (now in Exeter's cathedral library) as a first source of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Its 23 homilies in prose are interspersed with 3,500 lines of religious, poetical and imaginative pieces.

Archdiocese Library
"Besides the "Vercelli Book" the Chapter Library is home to 229 codices," Father Gianluca Gonzino, the librarian, told me. "The most important is the fourth-century Codex Vercellensis Evangeliorum (A), commissioned by Vercelli’s first bishop St. Eusebius(283-371)himself, the oldest translation of the Gospels in Latin, and the oldest codex in Piedmont. The twelfth-century Sacramentarium Ambrosianum and many other codices, dating from the second-half of eighth to the end of the sixteenth century, contain illuminations of rare beauty.

Mappa Mundi
"Not to mention," said Anna Cerutti, the Director of the Library, "that the Cathedral's Archives next door is home to another unicum of unknown provenance: a 13th-century Mappa Mundi, a oval-shaped parchment 84 x 72 cm., even older than the three other similar Mappae Mundi in the British Library. It is marked with east (Asia) at the top, west (Europe) at the bottom, and Africa on the right, is drawn in four colors of ink, sepia, green, red, and black, and labeled in sepia. Clearly identifiable in Europe: Spain, Gaul, Italy and the Balkan Peninsula; in Africa: Mauritania, Numidia, Tripolitania, and Egypt; and in Asia: Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Scythia, Armenia, India, Persia, and Mesopotamia.

Besides books, Vercelli’s Cathedral Treasure Museum is one of Italy’s riches collections of religious objects: reliquaries, urns, and holy vases, displayed in chronological order to illustrate the history of evangelization and the development of artistic techniques.

"Camillo Leone" Museum
Another Vercelli sight of importance to bibliophiles is the collection of incunabula and cinquecentine at the "Camillo Leone" Museum (Via Verdi 30, tel. -39-0161-253204, hours: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday: 3-5:30 PM and Sunday 10 AM-12 PM and 3-6 PM). Several were printed by native-son typographers, (many of whom had learned this trade in Venice), either in Vercelli or nearby Trino, or in other Italian cities, particularly in Venice. Others were printed in Vercelli or Trino by printers from elsewhere.

     Like Cardinal Bicchieri, Camillo Leone (1830-1907) was a native son well-versed in the law and an avid collector of ancient artifacts (his Egyptian collection was and still is one of Italy’s best), medieval sculpture, tapestries, ceramics, furniture, glass, porcelain, silver, jewelry, and clothing as well as of books and documents pertaining to local history. A highlight of Leone's book collection on display is Sphera Mundi by Giovanni Sacrobosco or the twelfth-century astronomer and mathematician John of Holywood, today's Halifax in Yorkshire. This short astronomical treatise was printed in Venice by Guglielmo da Trino (a small nearby town known as "piccolo Lipsia" or "Little Leipzig" in the fifteenth century) in 1491. Another is Matthaeus Silvaticus's alchemical Opus Pandectarum printed in Venice by Guglielmo Stagnino, also from Trino, in 1499.

“F. Borgogna” Museum
     After the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, the next in importance in Piedmont is the Borgogna Museum, one of the ten most important picture galleries in Italy (Via A. Borgogna 10, tel. 011-39-0161-252776 or -211338, www.museoborgogna.it, closed Mondays). The 450 works-of-art currently on display include paintings, furnishings, and objets d’art all donated to the city by native-son Antonio Borgogna in 1906, together with his neo-classical dwelling, still home to the museum. The group of Renaissance paintings from Vercelli and elsewhere in Piedmont is considered its greatest treasure.

The Synagogue
Begun in 1874 by Giuseppe Locarni, to the original drawings of Marco Treves, Vercelli’s synagogue (Via Foà 70, tel. 011-39-338-1438521) was the first to be built in Italy after the emancipation of the Jews, authorized by Carlo Alberto in 1848. Its grandiose middle-eastern style attests to the then prosperity of Vercelli’s Jewish community.

Where to Stay and to Eat
Off-the-beaten track since the Middle Ages and not for first-time travelers to Italy, Vercelli does not offer a wide choice of hotels and restaurants, but Il Giardinetto (Via Luigi Sereno 3, tel. 011-39-0161-257230, www.hrgiardinetto.com) and the newly-opened Hotel Cinzia-Ristorante Risotteria (Corso Magenta 71, tel. 011-39-0161-253585, www.hotel-cinzia.com) both offer comfortable accommodations and good local cuisine. La panissa at Il Paiolo (Corso Garibaldi 72, tel. 011-39-0161-250577), a country-style trattoria in the city-center, is especially good.

Although 66 kilometers north-northwest of the city, visitors to Vercelli should not leave without visiting the Sacred Mountain of Varallo (600 m. above sea level) across from snow-capped Monte Rosa. One of Piedmont’s most famous pilgrimage sights reachable by foot (20 minutes uphill from the town center of Varallo, or by cable car (2 euro round-trip) and the oldest of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, it was the brainchild of the Milanese Franciscan friar, Father Bernardino Caimi, who had lived in Palestine for several years and in 1486 was given papal permission to reproduce the Holy Land here for the illiterate local peasants. Later expanded by St. Carlo Borromeo during the Counter-Reformation, Varallo was included by UNESCO in the World Heritage List in 2003. The environs are comprised of winding uphill paths past some 45 chapel-like enclosures containing groups of some 800 life-size painted terracotta figures with backgrounds in fresco (by Gaudenzio Ferrari and others). The tableaux represent scenes mainly from the life of Jesus: The Annunciation, The Visitation, Joseph’s Dream, The Nativity, The Flight into Egypt, The Massacre of the Innocents, The Baptism of Jesus, many miracles, the Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, and several scenes leading up to the Crucifixion, and Pietà, to name a selection.

In 1984 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of St. Carlo Borromeo, Pope John Paul celebrated the “Itinerarium Crucis” here and two year later, in 1986, Cardinal Martini, then Archbishop of Milan and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, commemorated the 500th anniversary of the “New Jerusalem” in Varallo. Ideal for retreats, this magnificent complex surrounded by a chestnut forest in one of Italy’s National Parks, offers comfortable accommodations for visitors at the newly-renovated three-star Sacro Monte Hotel, founded in 1594 by Bishop Bescabé as an inn for pilgrims and artists, with an excellent restaurant serving local dishes, or at the atmospheric two-star Casa del Pellegrino. For further information click on www.atlvalsesiavercelli.it.