Albinea
The name Albinea did not originally refer to the current urban agglomeration (which it would be more correct to call la Fola, in memory of the inn of the same name) but to the parish church and the hill where the ancient church (first mentioned in 898) the castle and the small agricultural Borgo called Broletto still stand.The church of Albinea, dedicated first to San Prospero and then to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. has also been modified over the centuries: from 1520 it had the honour of housing a Madonna painted by Correggio, but in 1702 the Duke of Modena Francesco III took it with him and nothing has been heard of it since.
The castle, formerly the Palace of the Bishop of Reggio, was fortified by the Fogliani family and then passed to the Manfredi family in the 14th century. Today, the castle belongs to the Maramotti family, founder of the Max Mara Group and great prestige for the town.
During the Second World War, two historical buildings in the hamlet of Botteghe, Villa Rossi (formerly Borgo del Balsamico) and Villa Calvi from 1944 to 1945 housed the Fifth Section of the German General Command in Italy and the headquarters of Li Gebirgskorps, the German Alpine corps deployed on the western Gothic Line between La Spezia and the Bolognese border.
On the night of 27 March, a handful of one hundred men from the Allied battalion, made up of British paratroopers from the 2nd SAS, Italian partisans from the Black Owl and Garibaldi Brigade and a battalion of Russian partisans launched a surprise attack.
The attack, led by British Major Roy Farran, was launched with the charge of a bagpipe played by Scotsman David Kirkpatrick, who had parachuted in a kilt a few days earlier over the Reggio Emilia Apennines.
The operation called Operation Tombola was decisive in speeding up the breakthrough of the Gothic Line by the Anglo-Americans, and is commemorated in a plaque still visible beside the current entrance.
