Italy, as we know it today, became a country in the 1860s. I know! I’ve always thought that Italy was its own country for many, many centuries. But no. Before the 1860s, it was a mix of kingdoms, city-states, ducal estates, and misc agrarian areas and, of course, the Papal States (The Pope’s Country). Italy was “unified,” so to speak, during the 1860s during a period called Il Risorgimento (roughly translates to “The Resurgence” in English) which was a period of civil war for several years.
Part of what contributed to the many separate political entities was the fact there is a vast mountain range that goes down the center of the peninsula, the Appenines range. This mountain range made it difficult to travel across the country from one coast to the other for many centuries. In fact, there was a time when it was faster/easier to go via boat from Rome on the west coast to cities on the east coast, traveling around the bottom of the peninsula. In a car today, the trip across the country takes 3-4 hours via highway.
Chad’s great-grandparents grew up in one of these mountain towns called Monteferrante, and we’ve been there a couple of times to visit relatives.
Monteferrante – a three-hour drive east of Rome, Chad’s great-grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from this village in the Appenine mountains
The rugged terrain also means that many villages were isolated from each other. It wasn’t uncommon for villages to be a couple of miles apart and for the people to never meet each other. This is also the reason that there are so many local dialects of the Italian language. People lived within their own communities for generations, and the language evolved over time. As result, when you travel around the country, you might encounter multiple words for the same thing. For example, these words all mean “boy” in Italian: ragazzo, ragasol, putel, pischello, putlet, piliso, pizzinnu, piccioccu, picciriddu, garsun, fante, magatel, begalt, redesoot, toso, butel, mulo, fioo, and frut.
And here’s another view from Monteferrante, looking over the adjacent valley at night. You can see lights from nearby villages below:
View from Monteferrante looking down at the valley below
The rest of the geography and climate of the peninsula also contributed to the development of different parts of Italy. The north has more vegetation and lakes and rivers and is more conducive to raising livestock. The south is warmer and more arid. If you think about this, it makes sense that, historically, the cuisine in the north has more meat and is cooked more frequently with butter (which is an animal product), and the cuisine in the south is more vegetable-based and uses olive oil as a staple ingredient.
And now the obligatory food photos from our last trip to Italy because, well, Italy:
Chad went foraging for mushrooms with cousin Antonino
Speaking of foraging, wild blackberries were in season when we were last there
These cheese-bread dumplings are served with tomato sauce and are a specialty of Chad’s ancestral region – I thought I died and went to heaven
…AND the obligatory meat and cheese plate photo
If you want to learn more about Italian history, I recommend the book The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour (can be found on Amazon). The author dives into everything from food to geography to politics to language to arts and architecture. I’m now reading it for the third time. (It’s that good!)