EMILIA-ROMAGNA


too: a cake-like dessert made from rice, pine nuts and almonds, brushed with sassolino — an aniseed-flavoured liquor. I sample the latter in Panificio Melli, a


pasticceria buried in the labyrinthine old town of ‘Reggio’, the de facto provincial capital, which I roll into late afternoon, mudguards rattling percussively on the compact cobbles. Stone columns support an arched ceiling of bare brickwork and the place is packed with animated locals. “Choose the dimensions of your slice,”


says the lady behind the counter, grandly, as she hovers her knife above a glisteningly gluttonous yellow wheel of the torta di riso. I hold off for as long as I dare, then pay for the resulting wedge by weight, and twin this with a couple of sugar-coated tortelli dolci, mini doughnut-like pillows, one filled with cream and the other with chocolate, coffee and marmalade. Panificio Melli sits just across the square


from the Basilica di San Prospero. Like much of this city — established two millennia ago as a staging post on the Romans’ newly built Via Emilia trunk road — the church is a compelling amalgam of historical layers. It’s renaissance in style, with a late baroque pinkish-brown facade. The extraordinary La Notte painting, by


Antonio di Correggio, was taken from the basilica by the area’s ruling duke in 1640 — a copy of the chiaroscuro-crafted masterwork sits in one of the side chapels, so you can see what you’re missing. But the frescoes that adorn the cupola and apse offer some consolation. With my bike propped up in the square outside, I slide into a pew at the front of the nave and spend a neck-cricking hour picking out tiny details from the dense ascension of figures above — an artistic, if not quite religious, conversion.


Among the vines East of Reggio, the landscape shifts perceptibly. Pastoral and arable land gives way to the viticultural: hobby vineyards at first, morphing into endless stripes that strobe my peripheral vision — the vines so established in places that their aged, sun-darkened branches touch across rows like gnarly fingers. Lambrusco has never been the most revered


of Emilia-Romagna’s indigenous produce, it’s fair to say. This patently irks Samuele Goldoni. At the Lusvardi vineyard, around 10 miles east of Reggio, the long-haired 28-year-old and his small team are engaged in the production of what, until not so long ago, would have been regarded as a snigger-inducing oxymoron: high-quality Lambrusco.


92 NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/TRAVEL


Cafes in Piazza San Prospero in Reggio Emilia, with the church Basilica di San Prospero in the background and Panificio Melli pastry shop in the foreground


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