Casale Monferrato () is a town in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrat hills. Beyond the river lies the vast plain of the Po valley.
An ancient Roman municipium, the town has been the most important trade and manufacturing centre of the area for centuries. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Casale became a free municipality and, in the 15th and early 16th centuries, served as the capital of the House of Palaiologos. Then in 1536, the town passed to the Gonzagas who fortified it with a large citadel. In the 17th century, Casale was heavily involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession and besieged by French and Spanish troops. During the wars of Italian unification the town was a defensive bulwark against the Austrian Empire.
In the 1900s Casale, in the middle of the Turin-Milan-Genoa industrial triangle, developed as an important industrial centre, especially known for the production of lime and cement.
Furthermore, the asbestos cement industry has also developed. A local Eternit factory has been at the centre of a massive environmental scandal, with subsequent high-profile litigation that often made international headlines.
History
Antiquity and Middle Ages
The origins of the town are fairly obscure. It is known that the Gaulish settlement of Vardacate (from var = "water"; ate = "populated place") existed on the Po in this area, and that it became a Roman municipium. By the beginning of the 8th century, there was a small town under Lombard rule, probably called Sedula or Sedulia. It was here (according to late and unreliable accounts) that one Saint Evasius, along with 146 followers, was decapitated on the orders of the Arian Duke Attabulo. Liutprand, King of the Lombards is said to have supported the construction of a church in honour of Evasius. Certainly, the martyr's cult flourished, and by 988 AD, the town had become known as Casale di Sant’Evasio.
At the time of Charlemagne, the town came under the temporal and religious power of the bishops of Vercelli, from which it was freed by Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Italy. It was sacked by the anti-imperial troops of Vercelli, Alessandria and Milan in 1215, but rebuilt and fortified in 1220. It fell under the power of the Marquess of Montferrat in 1292, (although it was conquered by the Visconti of Milan in 1370, it remained under their control until 1404) and later became the capital of the marquessate.
The condottiere Facino Cane was born in Casale Monferrato and he participated, financed by the Duke of Milan Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in the Battle of Casalecchio in 1402, but Theodore II, Marquess of Montferrat, the son of Isabella of Majorca, did not participate. Gian Galeazzo spent 300,000 golden florins attempting to turn from their courses the river Mincio from the city of Mantua, but Gian Galeazzo died.
In 1536 it passed to the Gonzagas of Mantua, who fortified it strongly. Thereafter it was of considerable importance as a fortress and was besieged during the Mantuan War of Succession.
Late modern and contemporary
In 1745, following the defeat of the Piedmontese army at the Battle of Bassignano during the War of the Austrian Succession, Casale was occupied by the victorious French and Spanish troops. Much damage was caused to the city's buildings. The subsequent renovation and rebuilding in the Baroque style made a substantial contribution to the urban texture.Grignolio, p.15
During the Wars of Italian Independence, it successfully resisted the Austrians in 1849 and was strengthened in 1852.
The vast limestone deposits in the hills nearby caused, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several concrete factories to open up in the town. Casale became known as the "cement capital of Italy".
Indeed, the city had the merit of being the first Italian city to develop industrial cement production, thanks to the richness and quality of the Monferrato marl suitable, without the addition of correctives, for the manufacture of natural cement.
Newspaper Lo Spettatore del Monferrato (‘The Monferrato Spectator’) was a regionally focused periodical published weekly from 1852 to 1855 in Casale Monferrato, north-west Italy, and printed by Tipografia Corrado.
Eternit asbestos disaster
From 1907 to 1986, Casale was the site of a large Eternit factory, that produced the homonymous asbestos cement, whose operations resulted in a massive environmental disaster, linked to the death of some 1,800 people from mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases in the area: in spite of former Eternit owner Stephan Schmidheiny and his associate, Jean-Louis de Cartie, being convicted and ordered to pay tens of millions of euros in compensation by the Turin Appeal Court in 2012, the Italian Supreme Court in 2014 declared that the statute of limitations had expired in the case.
Main sights
Piazza Mazzini and its environs
The historic centre of the town is itself centred on Piazza Mazzini, the site of the Roman forum. Named for Giuseppe Mazzini, a key republican figure of the Risorgimento, it is dominated by an 1843 equestrian statue by Abbondio Sangiorgio of King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia, dressed in Roman costume, specifically as a senator, with his knees uncovered. The statue was commissioned by the municipal authorities as a mark of gratitude to the king for having selected Casale as the seat of Piedmont's second Court of Appeal and to celebrate the construction of Casale's first permanent bridge across the Po. Locally the square is called Piazza Cavallo (:wiktionary:cavallo being the Italian word for "horse").
Duomo
A little to the east of the square is the Lombard Romanesque cathedral of Sant'Evasio, founded in 742, rebuilt in the early 12th century and consecrated on 7 January 1107 by Pope Paschal II. It occupies a site where once was a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter. It underwent restoration in 1706 and again in the 19th century. The cathedral has an asymmetric façade, including a complex narthex with two galleries (matronaei) connected by a tribune and closed by round arches. The interior houses the relics of Saint Evasius and, near the presbytery, fragments of 11th-century pavement mosaics with Biblical scenes (now remounted on the walls of the corridor from the apse to the sacristy).
San Domenico In 1471, after William VIII, Marquess of Montferrat had chosen Casale as the permanent location of the marquisate court, construction began of the church of San Domenico, to the north of Piazza Mazzini. Work on the building ceased for some time, as a result of political instability; in the early 16th century a fine, if slightly incongruous, Renaissance portal was imposed on the late Gothic façade.
Via Lanza Via Lanza, which runs northwards from the north-west corner of Piazza Mazzini, is known for the Krumiri Rossi bakery, which indeed produces Krumiri: biscuits which have been a speciality of Casale since their legendary invention in 1870 by one Domenico Rossi after an evening spent with friends in Piazza Mazzini's Caffè della Concordia (now a bank). Also in Via Lanza is the 17th-century church of San Giuseppe, probably designed by Sebastiano Guala; a painting attributed to the Ursuline nun Lucrina Fetti (c.1614–1651,For the dates of birth and death see brother of Domenico) shows Christ venerated by Sant’Evasio and includes a very accurate depiction of contemporary Casale with its civic tower. The church and convent of San Francesco, which housed the remains of many of the Marquises of Monferrato, was turned to other uses during the 18th century and demolished in the nineteenth. The high open tower which is a landmark of Via Lanza belongs to Palazzo Morelli di Popolo; it has been attributed to Bernardo Vittone, and also to Magnocavalli—both are believed to have had a hand in the refurbishment of the building.
Via Saffi Running west from Piazza Mazzini to Piazza Castello is Via Saffi, which contains one of the town's most recognizable landmarks: the Torre Civica. This brick tower, square in plan and 60 metres high, dates from the 11th century but suffered severe fire damage in April 1504 when a festival to celebrate the peace between Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I and King Louis XII of France got out of hand. The reconstruction, completed six years later by Matteo Sammicheli, produced a taller structure which included the current bell chamber. The balconies attached to the upper part of the tower were added during the period of Gonzaga rule. Subsequent restorations were carried out in 1779 (after a lightning strike which destroyed the 15th-century clock) and again in 1920.
Adjoining the tower is the church of Santo Stefano which stands on the east side of a small square named after it. The church's origins date to the beginning of the second millennium, but it was largely rebuilt in the mid-17th century under a project attributed to Sebastiano Guala; work on the current façade began in 1787 but was not completed until the late 19th century. Inside are paintings by Giovanni Francesco Caroto (1480–1555), Il Moncalvo (1568–1625), Giorgio Alberini (1575/6 – 1625/6), and Francesco Cairo (1607–1665). Adorning both the walls and the vault are 15 tondi depicting prophets, apostles and the Virgin painted by Pietro Francesco Guala in 1757, the last year of his life.
The south side of Piazza Santo Stefano, facing back towards Via Saffi, is formed by the neo-classical Palazzo Ricci di Cereseto. The imposing façade, marked by four massive brick columns, was built in 1806 to an earlier design by the local architect Francesco Ottavio Magnocavalli.
Also in the square, there is a marble statue of the archaeologist and architect Luigi Canina by Benedetto Cacciatore.
Piazza Castello Piazza Castello is a large irregularly shaped open space used as a car park and as a market square; it is dominated by the castle of the Paleologi which occupies most of its western side. The square arose in 1858 through the demolition of the castle's eastern ravelin and was extended in the late nineteenth/early 20th century when the remaining ravelins were removed.
Castle The castle itself is an imposing 15th-century military construction, with a hexagonal plan, four round towers and an encircling moat.
Santa Caterina At the southeast corner of the piazza is the elegant Baroque church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, better known by its earlier designation of Santa Caterina. A masterwork of Giovanni Battista Scapitta, completed after his death by Giacomo Zanetti, it is marked by an elliptical cupola, and a façade curvilinear both in plan and elevation.
Teatro Municipale
The theatre, which stands at the north-eastern corner of the piazza at the end of Via Saffi, opened in 1791 with a performance of the La moglie capricciosa, an opera buffa by Vincenzo Fabrizi. Its construction, to a design by Abbot Agostino Vitoli of Spoleto, had taken six years. However, it fell into disuse during the period of Napoleonic rule and remained closed for several decades. After extensive internal embellishment, the theatre reopened in 1840 with a performance of Vincenzo Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda. In 1861 the theatre was sold by the Società dei Nobili to the local authority (the comune) which made it more accessible to the general public. Nevertheless, it fell again into decline; during World War II it was used as a store. Major restoration work took place in the 1980s and the theatre finally reopened in 1990 with a performance by Vittorio Gassman. Since then it has offered a mixture of theatre, music and dance, while the foyer is used for exhibitions, usually photographic.