PDO cured meats from Piacenza

Coppa, salame and pancetta: these are the three cured meats produced in Piacenza that have won the Protected Designation of Origin. This is a recognition at European level granted to those products where the whole productive process, from supply of the raw materials to maturing of the finished product, takes place in a limited geographical area.

In the territory around Piacenza, the breeding of pigs and the processing of their meat is a tradition that goes back millennia, as is proved by the prehistoric tools found in various sites through the province. The cured meats of Piacenza were known and much appreciated in the Middle Ages, and from the 17th century became greatly sought after by merchants from Lombardy, who distinguished them from lower quality meats, calling them "roba de Piaseinsa" - goods from Piacenza.

In the 18th century it was largely due to Cardinal Giulio Alberoni , a wily diplomat from Piacenza in the service of Philip V, King of Spain, that the cured meats of Piacenza earned a place of honour on the tables of the Spanish and French nobility.

Today the cured meats of Piacenza are still produced according to the traditional methods and using selected raw materials of premium quality: this is the secret that makes them so good!