Alba

People lived here as early as the Neolithic, and the town took its Latin name, Alba Pompeia, when it was recognised as a town by the consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, who was building a road from Acqui to Turin. Parts of a fortified gate and remains of buildings with marble and mosaics survive from the Roman city, which had a polygonal plan. Alba was the birthplace of Pertinax, briefly Roman emperor in 193.

After the fall of the Western Empire the town was sacked again and again, by Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Lombards, Franks, Hungarians and Saracens among others. In the 11th century it became a free commune and joined the Lombard League, and its towers, built in the 14th and 15th centuries, earned it the name of the city of a hundred towers. Montferrat and the Visconti fought over it, and it later passed to the Gonzaga, until the Treaty of Cherasco in 1631 assigned it to Savoy. Under Napoleon it was briefly the Republic of Alba and then part of the French Empire, before returning to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.

The Second World War gave Alba its most famous modern episode. On 10 October 1944 partisans liberated the town and declared a Republic of Alba, which held out until 2 November; the writer Beppe Fenoglio, born here, fought in it. The town received the Gold Medal for Military Valour for its resistance. In 2017 Alba joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

Alba is one of the main towns of the Langhe-Roero and Monferrato vineyard landscapes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its identity is bound up with what the hills produce. The white truffle fair, begun in 1928 as a sideshow to the grape harvest festival, has grown into a national event; guests of the fair over the years have included Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio.

Autumn is also the season of the Palio degli Asini, a donkey race through the town on the first Sunday of October. In late spring the Alba Music Festival fills medieval churches with choral and chamber music, and the Vinum fair celebrates the local wines. The Gothic church of San Domenico holds much of the town's finest sacred art, and the Palazzo Comunale and the church of San Giovanni Battista have paintings by Macrino d'Alba, the Renaissance painter believed to have been born here.

Much of the town's life is tied to the land and its products, from the vineyards to the truffle grounds, and the town has its own name, Ârba, in the dialect of the Langhe.

Alba has about 31,000 inhabitants. It is a prosperous town with a broad economy: Ferrero, maker of Nutella, is based here, as are the publishing house Società San Paolo, the textile firm Miroglio and the Banca d'Alba, Italy's largest cooperative credit bank by number of members.

The countryside lives on wine. Around 290 wineries in the Alba area cultivate about 700 hectares of vines, producing Barolo, Barbaresco and Moscato among the top-rank DOCG wines and Barbera, Dolcetto and Nebbiolo among the DOC ones. Truffles, hazelnuts and food tourism add to the local economy, and the town is the shopping and service centre for the villages of the Langhe and Roero.

The rhythm of the year follows the vineyards: harvest in early autumn, then the truffle fair, when visitors fill the streets and restaurants, followed by a quieter winter. A large open-air market fills the area around Piazza Guglielmo Marconi at weekends.

The white truffle, tartufo bianco d'Alba, is the town's great product, found mainly in the Langhe and Monferrato and above all in the countryside around Alba and Asti. The truffle market is busiest in October and November, when the fair takes place. In season it is shaved raw over dishes such as tajarin, the thin Piedmontese egg pasta.

Local sweets include pesche ripiene, stuffed peaches; the hazelnut cake of the Langhe; paste di meliga, biscuits; and bunèt, a custard dessert made with cocoa and amaretto. Hazelnuts and chocolate also underpin the town's best-known industry, the Ferrero confectionery company.

Wine is everywhere. The hills around Alba produce Barolo and Barbaresco from the Nebbiolo grape, along with Barbera d'Alba, Dolcetto d'Alba and sweet Moscato, and the old town's wine shops and osterie are the easiest places to try them. With about 290 wineries in the Alba area alone, the choice runs from famous estates to small family producers.