Pollenzo site features

Pollenzo reads as one thing — a 19th-century Savoy village — built over another, a Roman one, and now occupied by a third.

What Carlo Alberto made between 1832 and 1848 was not a palace but a podere modello: a model estate for experimentation and the improvement of agricultural and oenological activity. The castle and the borgo were transformed together, as one project with an agricultural purpose.

The Agenzia is the complex at the centre of it, and it is now a campus: since 2004 it has been the seat of the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche, run under the aegis of Slow Food — the movement founded in Italy in 1986 and campaigning for the right to pleasure and to food that is good, clean and fair.

Under all of it is Pollentia, the Roman city of the 2nd century BC, named by Pliny the Elder. The battle of 402 was fought near the city rather than in the streets you walk.

The poet Claudian wrote about that victory, and his evidence needs handling: in De Bello Gothico he fuses Marius's defeat of the Cimbri at the Raudine Plain in 101 BC with Stilicho's over the Goths half a millennium later — but he does name Pollenzo.

The battlefield of 402

Where Stilicho defeated Alaric's Visigoths and forced them to withdraw into Illyria. Eight years before Alaric took Rome, he was stopped here.

Pollentia, the Roman city

Founded in the 2nd century BC and already cited by Pliny the Elder — which means it was a known place in the Roman world, not a garrison.

Carlo Alberto's model estate, 1832–1848

Sixteen years of royal transformation of the borgo and the castle together, aimed at experimentation and the improvement of agriculture and winemaking. A king building an agricultural laboratory.

The Agenzia

The complex at the heart of the village, and since 2004 the seat of the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche.

Slow Food

Founded in Italy in 1986, and the co-founder of the university here in 2004 with the Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna regions. Its stated cause is the right to pleasure and to food that is good, clean and fair.

A title without a kingdom

Vittorio Emanuele III abdicated on 9 May 1946 and took the title of Conte di Pollenzo — the last King of Italy naming himself after this village.