Can a simple day trip really turn into an experience capable of rendering daily life a mere distant memory, transporting the visitor to an ancient era, untainted by traffic and modern-day technology? This is the extraordinary power of Soncino, the fourteenth-century village situated midway between Cremona and Brescia: visiting this place is like taking a great leap into a past that speaks of an ancient village and its strategic importance. There is so much history in the streets of this village, goods, stories and lives have crossed those walls, walls that were built to repel Hungarian invasions and played a key role in maintaining the preciousness of a village rich in artistic and historical monuments: the Pieve di Santa Maria Assunta bell tower, the Civic Tower, the heptagonal tower of the San Giacomo church, the Castle and, outside the walls, the Santa Maria delle Grazie church frescoed by Giulio Campi, to name but a few.
Local cuisine, traditional dishes, interesting facts
For over 40 years, on the fourth Sunday of October, the village of Soncino has played host to the “Sagra delle radici” (“Festival of roots”), a festival that pays homage to the roots of a plant that shares its name with the village and can be enjoyed in a variety of ways: boiled, au gratin, preserved in oil or even dried and roasted. There are a multitude of soncino-based dishes that can be savoured in one of the village's many restaurants and trattorias, all linked to the ancient peasant traditions of the Cremona and Brescia areas and oriented towards a traditional cuisine whose quality relies on fine ingredients: from mulberry jam, to snails cooked in olive oil, parsley and garlic, to traditional Cremonese cured meats, to donkey stew, to free-range poultry, to homemade casoncelli filled pasta and finally to pasta and bean soup.
Where to eat enjoying a bottle
of Acqua San Benedetto
Ristorante Molino San Giuseppe 1228
via Borgo Sotto, 4
