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THE CITY OF ALESSANDRIA

Alessandria is the main town of the province, at the crossroads of the Northern Intalian industrial triangle between Milan, Turin and Genoa and counts today approximately 95,000 inhabitants.

The town has been inhabited from the second half of 1100 as a result of the spontaneous aggregation of the populations living in the villages around Rovereto, Borgoglio, Marengo, Villa del Foro, Oviglio, Gamondio, Solero and Quargnento. This aggregative process depended on the common will to get rid of the pressure of the Alerami, the landlords of the Monferrato. Nonetheless the tradition, in order to explain the birth of Alessandria, emphasizes - and Machiavelli with it - also the positive infuence of the contemporary Lombard League, the political and military union of some free commons that gathered in Pontida to defend their autonomy against the pretensions of centralization advanced by the Emperor Frederick the Red Beard. Alessandria was named just after the patron of the League, the Pope Alexander III.

That is the reason why, three years since having been founded, on 29 October 1174, Alessandria was besieged by the Emperor. Enclosed all around from a formidable ditch and being able to count only on the force of its 8,000 inhabitants, the town, underestimated by the Red Beard, succeeded to resist until the 12 April 1175 when, at the news that a numerous army raised by the Lombard League was approaching the city, the Emperor abandoned the besiege. The medieval reporters painted this episode with the story of Gagliaudo, the peasant who tricked the besiegers by pursuing his glutton cow outside the walls, thus meaning that Alessandria was not getting starved at all. The foundation was then formally concluded in 1183 when the city obtained the definitive acknowledgment of legal state also as a part of the Empire with the name of Cesarea.

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