IVREA. For over seventy years or since the Ivrea toponymy, in the aftermath of the Second World War, recorded the naming of numerous squares and streets after victims of Nazi-Fascist ferocity, it has been known as Via Quattro Martiri (which were, to be precise, Remo De Luca, Enrico Maucci, Salvatore Solinas e Alfonso Guarneri), but the road that connects via Arduino to Porta Aosta has changed several names in its long history.
Starting from the most remote period, the Roman one, when, extending into the current alley of the Leon d’Oro, it constituted the cardo maximus of the ancient Eporedia, one of the two main roads and precisely the one that, from the Porta Fontana (the first covered arched passageway down towards the current Via Amedeo di Castellamonte), crossed the city from north to south (the other , thedecumanus, crossed it from east to west, and corresponded to the union of the current via Palestro and Arduino).
At the time of Theatrum Sabaudiae, published in 1682, it was the so-called Rua cuerta (covered) name that was said to derive from being covered by the ruins of the north-east tower of the castle blown up in 1676, causing the destruction of 187 houses and the death of 51 people. In reality in the Statutes of 1313 the street was already indicated as Rucha covered, due to the fact, most likely, that, being narrow, the roofs protruding from both sides covered it almost completely, as, in some points it was still visible to the first of the twentieth century.
From when, in 1725, it was destined as a quarter of the Israelites, until then, from 1547, forced to live in Borghetto, it was commonly called Contrada degli Eebra. In the Synodal Constitutions of the Diocese of Eporedia, published in 1672 by Bishop Giacinto Truchi, among the measures adopted against Jews, the obligation to constantly carry, without distinction of sex, “a sign on the person that distinguishes them from Christians” .
“A sense of infinite pity and indignation – wrote Carandini over two centuries later – seizes us when we think of the ferocious intolerance that dictated these rules and that forced God’s creatures to live like brutes in that narrow, gloomy, badly paved alley. which on rainy days the water fell backwards from the roofs devoid of gutters, inside houses threatening ruin, plagued by an acrid stench which, with the emanations of the second-hand shops, made the air unbreathable ».
Equal rights arrived in 1848, while, in 1875, at number 24, the Synagogue was inaugurated, now owned by the Municipality which, after the restoration, rents it for cultural events. In the same building is a small temple, the current meeting place of the Ivrea Jewish community. In times of French domination, the street was called Rue Napoléon.
After the riots of 1821, it was decided to name the street after the count Alerino Palma di Cesnola who was the initiator in Ivrea: hence the name of via Palma with which it is still popularly known today.
Among the illustrious residents in the street, it is impossible not to mention Camillo Olivetti whose father, Salvador Benedetto, owned the fabric shop inherited from his ancestors, located at the corner with via Arduino, on the right, to go up. There, behind the long counter that held two sides of the shop, at right angles, the mother of the founder of the company of the same name reigned, Elvira Sacerdoti, originally from Modena, daughter of bankers. Thus described a habit of the latter and the atmosphere of the shop the writer Salvator Gotta in his Il progress has fun: “There was a particular smell of rolled cloths protruding from the shelves that covered the walls, up to the ceiling: cloths and fabrics for men’s clothing. Everyone in the city knew, and therefore no one was surprised, that often, in the afternoon hours, Signora Olivetti, a little woman of indefinable age, very small in stature, smoked a Tuscan cigar. Which she did not flaunt, although she was not ashamed of it. The smell of cigar smoke lingered in the air, although the stub lay, dull, in an ashtray placed there on the counter. ‘
The Olivetti family lived in the apartments above the shop, in one of which, with two French doors overlooking Via Quattro Martiri, is now the lawyer’s office. Costanza Casali, currently councilor for Culture who, right in the Ancient Synagogue, in 2016, set up and curated the splendid exhibition by the artist Paolo Amico «Ivrea industrial city, Ivrea city for art». Still on the subject of artists, the street now houses the Arterìa atelier of Luca Cristiano, known street artist with the name of Weed, but also an artist short, and hosted, until a few years ago, that of the Castellamontese ceramist, Maria Teresa Rosa. Rosa created, among other things, in 2015, the sign of the La piola del Generale bar-restaurant: an intervention that it was hoped would also be requested by the other merchants of the street, in order to give an artistic touch that would make all the signs are a sort of open-air display. This was not the case and a great opportunity to enhance the street, the shops that overlook it and an ancient art linked to the territory that would have been concretely told in the best way has been lost. –