The oldest city garden, for centuries a place for strolling and the scene of events, games, sports competitions. Starting from 1662 the area, once dedicated to the accumulation of rubble and waste since the Middle Ages, was destined for public use: partly occupied by gardens and mulberry crops, the rest was equipped with wide avenues and of a central square available to visitors.

Its definitive arrangement is due to some extent to Napoleon himself who, in the three days in which he stayed in Bologna, took care to give the city some typically French mark.

At the end of the nineteenth century the garden was equipped with a new scenographic entrance: the monumental staircase of the Pincio built in 1896 to a design by Tito Azzolini and Attilio Muggia, at the base of which is a fountain sculpted by Diego Sarti and Pietro Veronesi.

Later, in the center of the garden the circular basin was placed, embellished with sculptural groups by Diego Sarti, which had been created for the Margherita Gardens at the time of the Emilian Exposition (1888).

Among the trees of the garden, which has an area of ​​6 hectares, stand out the large foliage of some monumental plane trees, whose layout dates back to the Napoleonic era.

The Montagnola has always represented a meeting place, a gateway to the city and a crossroads where, as early as 1800, the recreational social life of citizens was centered.

The nineteenth-century layout of the garden has been maintained until today, both in the architectural elements and in the organization of the greenery. Of the trees planted in the Napoleonic era, some imposing planes survive, still in good health.

There is a farm that believes in the passion among people, that believes in the strength of the earth, that believes that between the cosmos and the roots there is harmony. Al di là del Fiume (Across the River) there are people who are waking up every morning with the dream of a better future.

Fricandò, 100% Albana grape from biodynamic cultivation, vinified with indigenous yeasts. The grapes are fermented and macerated with the skins for a few months in Italian terracotta amphorae.

A native vine of the Bolognese territory with thick skin, amber at the end of maturation, good content of tannins and aromas of very ripe fruit.

For these peculiarities it was decided to vinify these grapes with a skin-contact maceration from two weeks to about three months in terracotta amphorae in order to have the complexity that this vine deserves.

Small addition of sulfur to the bottling which guarantees a correct shelf life without affecting the wholesomeness of the wine in the least. Refinement in bottle for about 3 months.

The result is a wine with an amber color, hints of ripe autumn fruit such as apples, medlars and citrus scents. In the mouth, the flavor accompanies a good tannic content which gives the wine a good sensation of pleasantness. 

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The protagonists of these four stories are normal people, from different backgrounds but united by the fact that they suddenly find themselves in unexpected and extraordinary situations and they have to get away with it. The protagonist of Outland rock (the story that gives the collection its name), Aurelio, watering the plants on the balcony, finds an object that seems to have fallen from the sky and is in fact the black box of a spy satellite, which many want to recover ...

For these everyday heroes, salvation can be found in escaping from their city and their life to an unknown destiny.

In Public Quiet, a biker arranges a betting round for a race and finds himself wrongfully involved in a murder. A similar thing happens to the protagonist of Passport, while in Colluttorius (which differs a little from other stories in style and length, so much so that it can be considered a short novel), a dentist is convinced that he has found the definitive cure for cavities, but this does not make him in the eyes of many a benefactor ... For these everyday heroes, salvation can be found in the escape, from their city and from their life, towards an unknown destiny.

Pino Cacucci was born in Alessandria, raised in Chiavari (Genoa) and moved to Bologna in 1975 to attend Dams. In the early 1980s he spent long periods in Paris and Barcelona, ​​which was followed by his first trips to Mexico and Central America, where he then resided for a few years. In addition to the narrative activity, he is accompanied by an intense work as a translator.