{"id":646,"date":"2026-02-12T11:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T11:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/?page_id=646"},"modified":"2026-02-12T11:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T11:31:19","slug":"soncino2012","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/travel\/soncino2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Soncino, 2 November 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soncino is a young city: it was officially granted city status only in 2004. On Monday 2 November 2012, however, I went there to check how well deserved another of its titles is: that of one of «the most beautiful villages in Italy». My verdict: it is deserved.
\n<\/a>The Rocca Sforzesca looks as if it has come straight out of a medieval story:
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\n<\/a>Unfortunately, I found out too late that from Tuesday to Friday it is open only until noon. They say that the interiors have also remained almost in their original state.
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\n<\/a>A good part of the 15th-century city walls is still standing: about two kilometres of fortifications, complete with towers and moat.
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\n<\/a>In the 19th century the Austrians demolished all four medieval gates. Today, white columns stand in their place.
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\n<\/a>The Pieve of St Mary Assumed, the most important church in the town, is beautiful (especially inside), but it interests us for two other reasons.
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\n<\/a>First of all, inside it not everyone is equal before the Lord…
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\n<\/a>… and secondly because its dome features a Madonnina far more beautiful than the one in Milan.
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\n<\/a>In another local church they managed to misspell the name of the saint whose mummy is displayed inside.
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\n<\/a>Of the medieval water and sewage system I found only a small canal and the remains of a few mills. One of the latter was well hidden beneath a formerly industrial building located near the Rocca.
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\n<\/a>In some stretches the historic centre looks mediocre, in others macabre.
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\n<\/a>But beautiful buildings appear quite often.
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\n<\/a>Under the Portico Rosso, built in the 18th century to host a market, I made a fine ethnographic discovery. Unfortunately, I do not have the habit of entering other people’s homes without permission, so let us move on.
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\n<\/a>Just a few steps away stands a small work by a drunken surveyor.
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\n<\/a>The truly ugly corners, which I found rather uninteresting, are in fact few. This is what they look like:
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\n<\/a>What is interesting, instead, is discovering a type of litter bin I had never seen before: the idea is not bad, even if the bag was fitted by an incompetent employee.
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\n<\/a>In front of a bar I then found one of the most beautiful ashtrays in the world. I have a proposal: bar and restaurant owners should each place a bin at the entrance of their premises — the speed at which it fills up with cigarette butts would provide an index of the place’s popularity (and therefore of its quality).
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\n<\/a>Next to the entrance of the St Paul oratory we find the installation «Young people and road safety» by the Rotary Club. The intended message did not reach me: perhaps I am no longer that young, but all I saw was a wrecked car (in any case, the airbags were deployed — perhaps young people are being encouraged always to install them).
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\n<\/a>Among all the shops in the historic centre that I saw, only one had anti-ram bollards. The curious thing is that it was a simple optician’s shop.
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\n<\/a>In Soncino it is not only glasses thieves who roam about, but also road-sign thieves. Perhaps this is why street-name signs are attached to as many as two poles.
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\n<\/a>The castle moat is protected from vandals by a very efficient turnstile.
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\n<\/a>I do not know why, but this suburban post office made me think of American landscapes.
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\n<\/a>I will conclude by saying that the agricultural sector is still strong in the Soncino area. Just a short walk from the historic centre there are small farmsteads responsible for some interesting landscapes.
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The photographic account of a tourist visit to Soncino on 2 November 2012. My assessment of the place: worth seeing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":206,"menu_order":31,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-646","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/646\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eugigufo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}