Historians and descendants of Christopher Columbus will meet in Turin this weekend to discuss whether the explorer was really born in a small town in the region of Piedmont and not in the port city of Genoa, as has been thought. The Italian news agency ANSA reports that conference organizers claim Columbus was born Cuccaro Monferrato, a village of just 370 inhabitants, southeast of Turin.
According to the ANSA report, Giorgio Casartelli, head of the village’s Columbus Centre, has proof of Columbus’ origins. “A sentence by the Spanish colonial Council of the Indies, handed down in a 1608 inheritance case, recognised that Columbus belonged to the family of the Colombos of Cuccaro,” Casartelli said this week . In Italian, Christopher Colombus is ‘Cristoforo Colombo.’
To find out more about visiting Turin and the region of Piedmont, see Dream of Italy’s Special Report: Turin/Piedmont.