Piemonte

The palate excellence:
Among all the flavours and refined specialties of the region, the place of honor surely shall be given to the Bianco D’Alba’s Truffle and to the great wines, especially Barolo and Barbaresco, the real Piemonte’s ambassadors in the world. A Piemontese tradition’s declaims that rice is born into water and has to die into wine. Rice and wine, both are two of the most typical productions of the area. 70% of the entire italian rice is produced near the Vercelli area. Several and different qualities are cultivated, among which we find Originario, Ribe, Arborio and Carnaroli. Furthermore the arts of ‘cioccolatè’ (chocolate manufacturing) made Torino city the chocolate capital of Italy, with its most famous being the Gianduiotto type, produced since 1867.

The rampant bull:
The city emblem is the rampant golden bull, with silver horns, over light blue background, wearing a nine-pearl crown. This emblem was officially adopted the 16th of June, 1687. To justify the name of the city, Torino, it was underlined that Cecrope (first king of Athens) named Dilfie, used to offer bulls to Jupiter as a sacrifice, after having slept with Jo, the better known Iside. Iside and Jo had already been assimilated by several authors as Ovidio, Tibullo, Properzio and Giovenale, even in the ‘Iseo’ of Pompei. As Pingone tells us, at those times Italy was called Apenninia, referring to the bull Api and it was so decided to give the first city beyond the mountains the name of Taurina.

Others say the name comes from the Celtic term ‘thon’, which means mount. Then, probably during the time, it mutated its name due to the symbol of the bull.