Originally it was a famous Roman camp, then it became a mainly agricultural district in a marginal position and it was destroyed in 1728 in order to build a military fortress, the Cittadella.

The Humiliated, who worked as excisemen and municipal treasurers, had become a sort of connection between lay and religious culture and had represented the first form of association of wage-earners who, as third parties, worked in the workshops attached to the monasteries.

The Humiliated were an order of Lombardian origin that was abolished by Pope Pius V because they were accused of being rich and corrupt .

Wool dyeing	View of the cloister of "San Giovanni del Cappuccio"

View of "Laboratorio degli Umiliati"

He was a general of cavalry and a Count; he was appointed military governor by the King of Savoy after the insurrection in 1821.
He was a tough and reactionary man who carried out the orders of the monarchy consciously; he oppressed the Alexandrian inhabitants who hated him; he ordered the Carbonaro Andrea Vochieri, a member of the Giovine Italia, to be arrested and shot.

CARLO ALBERTO CANAL (ex "Betale"):

When general Galateri was governor, the old "Betale" canal was reopened for irrigation and industrial purposes and it took the name of "Carlo Alberto Canal". In 1888 it was diverted in order to build Piazza Garibaldi.

As a new bridge in the Orti district was necessary, a lot of plans were proposed but they were rejected for economic reasons: from engineer Pera’s plan to engineer Bistolfi’s one, to engineer Straneo’s one, and to the ones with metallic trusses of a building firm from Savigliano (they were asked twice to submit advantageous offers).

At last in 1887 engineer Straneo’s plan was chosen but he himself asked to abandon it because he explained that danger would occur in case of flood according to the data of the 1789 flood.

Ludovico Straneo (Pontestura 1841 – Alessandria 1934)

He was the chief engineer of the municipality of Alessandria from 1883 to 1906 and councillor responsible for Public Works from 1911 to 1913. Together with engineer Aristide Leale, he planned Piazza Garibaldi (1890), the first enlargement of the cemetery with the present façade (1884 – 1900), the avenue and the bridge connecting the Orti district to the hill (1895), (even if built at the expenses of the city walls, whose pulling down occured in accordance with the town planning politics of the time) and the Post Office Palace (1904 – 1909).

Among Straneo's other works of urban renewal, the completion of the sewerage system and the building of the banks protecting the Orti from floods of the Tanaro (from 1880), the final operation for the arrangement of the premises of the town library and the building of the Museum and of the picture-gallery (from 1903) and of the pubblic baths (from 1906) no longer existing.

Ludovico Straneo

The Orti district appears only in some old maps of the town because it was situated just outside the ex city wall.
On the contrary, in the literary descriptions in the past centuries, it is mentioned as a peculiarity of Alessandria.
Giuliano Porta counts the Orti among " his four noble things".
(Source: l’Alessandrina tetracty Milano 1670).

The achievement of the town is confirmed in a chapter of the Statutes of 1297 which stated that only the municipal toll could be collected.
Until 1300 the collection of the tolls was entrusted to the Humiliated, who created an irrigation canal out of the Bormida in the area of Gamalero ("Betale").

ROVERETO:

Village on the Tanaro developed around the homonymous castle and the original nucleus of Alessandria. Later it became a district.

BOATS AND BURCHIELLOS

The boat traditionally used was the burchiello. It is a boat with a flat bottom whose length can vary from 6 metres to 9 metres. The burchiello can be used only on rivers and lakes; it rarely keels over, but an experienced hand is necessary to cox it. It is steered with a particular wooden oar that has a round handle and an oval blade with two iron points. The framework of the buchiello consists of acacia boards, a very hard waterproof wood and resists the wear and tear of time. Once the burchiellos were used to carry agricultural produce and timber, to fish and also to ferry the people: along the course of the river there were ports loading stages and landing places for the boats. The last landing place was seriously damaged during the flood of 1994 and it was removed in order to widen the river bed.

Burcé

DOCUMENTS:

18.07.1879 : Document sent to the revenue office in which Mr Giovanni Pellati asks for permission to keep, above and below the Cittadella Bridge, lifeboats to be used in the event of flooding and, under normal conditions, to go boating on the river Tanaro.

23.9.1879 : Document in which the municipal architect grants permission to have two lifeboats built to be used in the event of flooding.

1890 : Document in which Mr Corona and Mr Bonicelli are granted again the permission to run a boat establishment for public navigation for amusement and rowing.

Once the illegal activities on the river Tanaro were numerous. The burchiellos, that carried goods to barges by day, turned into smuggling boats by night; they carried wheat, the "marosseri" traded inside the city walls without paying duty on it, to town.
In addition the burchiellos ferried the "sfrosatori", forage and cattle thieves, from one bank to the other, in defiance of the Guards on the bastions.
Throughout the 19^th century the Tanaro was also the route of alcohol and tobacco contraband.

INTERRUPTION OF THE MILLING ACTIVITY:

It was due to:

WINTER FROSTS

In 1306 the frozen river blocked the way to people, cattle and every type of cart; so, as the mills could not work, the town was afflicted by famine and the poor people were especially affected.

In 1654 the ice hit the mills so strongly that it broke away nineteen of them; they were carried away, hit by the lumps of ice and were totally destroyed.

FLOODS

In 1616 the Tanaro rose so high that it broke away eight mills and carried them a long distance away, although they had been tied with strong chains and mooring lines.

In 1655 the river rose so high that it overflowed and flooded the town and it broke away three mills during its violent running.

In 1857 another very heavy flood of the Tanaro caused considerable damage; the violence of the waters caused the mills to drift.

DROUGHT

In 1828 a great drought occured and as the Tanaro was nearly waterless, the mills stopped working.

In 1861 the great drought, beside causing damage to the harvest, had negative effects also on the milling activity; in fact the lack of water caused the mills to stop. In consequence the price of foodstuffs rose: the price of maize meal was 40 centesimi each kilo and best quality bread was 45 centesimi.

FISH AS A SOURCE OF FOOD:

Fish cooking.

Freshwater fish has always been delicious food. In the past fish was cooked as fried or soused fish.
The seasoning was poor, in fact housewives used lard in the place of olive oil. To cook fried fish they bought roaches, chubs, carps, and barbels. They cut them into large pieces, then they covered them with unrefined maize meal and fried them in lard and added some sage leaves.
On the contrary housewives soused fish when they wanted to keep it longer since there were no refrigerators.

FRESHWATER FISH:

Fish, except for some species, is always the same. Waters are rich with chub, carp, roach, eels, crucians, barbels and loaches. Some years ago sheat-fish was found in the rivers Tanaro and Po; it created a great imbalance in the river waters and damaged nearly the whole fish fauna because of its voracity.