📜 1661
Mortadella: the sausage Bologna protected in 1661
How a Roman-era pork sausage became one of the world's first food products with written production rules.
Storia · Culinary history
The History of Italian Sandwiches & Food
From a cardinal's decree on mortadella in 1661 to Milan's 1980s paninari: the stories behind the food you'll eat in Italy. Every article lists its sources.
📜 Middle Ages – today
Lampredotto and Florence's trippai
Why Florence's favourite street sandwich is named after a fish, and who the trippai are.
📜 1600s
Florence's wine windows (buchette del vino)
Tiny arched hatches in palace walls, used to sell wine without contact during the plague.
📜 1926
From 'sandwich' to tramezzino: Turin, 1926
How a café in Turin invented Italy's crustless triangle sandwich, and how a poet named it.
📜 1950 / IGP 2011
Porchetta di Ariccia: Rome's roast-pork roll
The hill town outside Rome that made porchetta famous, and the festival that started in 1950.
📜 1900 / IGP 2014
Piadina: 'the national bread of Romagna'
From peasant flatbread to beach-kiosk icon, with a little help from a poet.
📜 1400s – today
Pane ca' meusa: Palermo's spleen sandwich
A soft sesame bun filled with veal spleen and lung, and a story that may reach back to the 1400s.
📜 1980s
The Paninari: when a sandwich bar named a generation
How Milan's 'Al Panino' bar gave its name to Italy's best-known 1980s youth subculture.
📜 1982 / 2023
The 'official' ragù alla bolognese
Why Bologna keeps its ragù recipe in a notary's deed at the Chamber of Commerce.
📜 1863
Pesto genovese: seven ingredients and a mortar
How a Ligurian garlic sauce became the world's favourite basil pesto.