Borgo Val di Taro

Borgo Val di Taro sits in the upper Taro valley, sixty-three kilometers southwest of Parma at the point where the province meets Liguria and Tuscany on the Apennine ridge. The town was a Roman waystation, then a possession of the Bobbio abbey, then of the Landi and Doria-Landi families through the medieval centuries. Modern Borgotaro built itself around the porcini trade: the Boletus mushrooms gathered in the surrounding chestnut woods were already famous in the nineteenth century, exported by emigrants to the Americas, and in 1996 the European Union granted the Fungo di Borgotaro Protected Geographical Indication status, the first European recognition for a wild mushroom.

The Consorzio per la Tutela del Porcino di Borgotaro was founded the same year. The Cittaslow movement admitted the town in the 2000s. The September Fiera del Fungo di Borgotaro is the calendar event; population has dropped under seven thousand but the porcini trade still anchors the local economy.