Italy’s Cement Capital, Casale Monferrato

Zagan the motorhome has a face full of castle. We’re in the town centre car park at Casale Monferrato (N45.13702 E8.44747), and the tourist info guys have given the thumb’s up to stay tonight (probably best not to stay Monday night though – the market sets up from 6am on Tuesdays).

Tonight’s freebie sosta in Casale Moferrato

Yesterday we woke up to this:

So we opted to stay put at our cemetery-side parking spot in San Damiano d’Asti, watching cars and lorries slowly negotiate the rapidly-whitening roads, at least until a tractor-mounted plough appeared late morning. We took a walk into town and looked around, not much happening. Perhaps the most interesting thing was the fact one church had opted to spite a rival (that’s my reading of it) by building its new church across the other’s main doorway!

As the snow fell, and monumental, dog-scaring thunder rumbled along the edge of the invisible Alps, we pulled out the map. With our previous Italian forays drawn across it, we’re looking for a new route, which is proving difficult! Just to the north of us lie the Italian lakes, a beautiful part of the world, but we’ve already had a good look around (the intimate Lago d’Orta was our favourite). To the south of us, Liguria and the Italian Riviera. While we’ve not spent much time there, we did have a crack at getting into Genoa once, and having been burnt once, don’t fancy trying that one again. The other immediate big attraction south is the Cinque Terre, but again we’ve visited that wonder, at least most of it!

So if not there, where? The Rough Guide out, we checked for a route east which would get us to some of the places we’ve never seen, Parma, Modena, and Bologna. Cross-referencing the places we know we can kip in, Casale Monferrato came up as a less-than-obvious first stop, since the Rough Guide refers to it as ‘Italy’s cement capital’ – hardly enticing.

It’s Sunday today by the way, and no, you cannot buy LPG on Sundays in Italy, we tried, we failed. It seems LPG (or GPL as it’s called here) can only be dispensed by a trained attendant in Italia, and said attendants don’t work Sundays. Our gas reserves are getting a bit low in the freezing weather, but they’ll last until tomorrow, hopefully, since we’ve also been to Lidl and rammed the fridge full of goodies.

The other thing the Rough Guide mentions about Casale Monferrato is the synagogue here ‘a leftover from the days when there was a sizeable Jewish population in Piedmonte’. Signs around town point the place out, which is lucky, since the entrance is almost hidden. In stark contrast to the imposing Catholic churches, Jews weren’t allowed to decorate the outside of their places of worship. They were allowed to decorate the inside though:

The synagogue in Casale Monferrato, decorated in Piedmonte Baroque style. A talk was underway as we wandered by, there are only a dozen local Jews left

A Hebrew text from 1785 in the museum which, ah, we think we should have paid to go look around. We legged it in the confusion as several ladies appeared all questioning themselves as to what we were doing inside…

A recent plaque also highlights part of a gate hinge in an old wall. Something you’d not bat an eyelid as you passed, but it’s now made clear what it was: the gate to a ghetto. Each night the Jewish population, most of whom had fled religious persecution in Spain, would be locked up. At least they fared better than their descendants under Il Duce, who handed them over to Hitler.

The location of the old Jewish ghetto gate

The cement, I have to say, is conspicuously absent. The town’s pleasant, even on a wet and cold March Sunday. Once lunch was over the populace started to appear, with a choir of nippers singing to proud parents stood in the main piazza and locals clutching cones leading us to a good-quality gelato shop called ‘Slurp’! Ju claimed victory in the battle of the tastes, with a rather lovely Nutella flavour.

A ‘fat bike’. We saw tracks for them in the snow up in the mountains

Casale Monferrato Duomo

The River Po – which cuts across Italy’s industrial heartland up here in the north, emptying out into the Adriatic near Venice

Mushroom magazine anyone?

Charlie playing it hard to get with the Cav Ladies.

Crucifix in the Casale Monferrato Duomo, nicked from nearby Alessandria in 1403, after they nicked it from here in 1215!

Finger’s cross the gas doesn’t run out folks, or we’ve got half a tonne of bacon and chicken to eat! Cheers, Jay

P.S. Lidl had a special on lager. €0.88 a litre. No crevice of the van is beer-free.