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APULICA / FRESH PASTA, BREAD AND PASTRY

Villa San Giovanni piparelle biscuits

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Fresh pasta, bread and pastry · Calabria

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

Piparelle are small, dry, fragrant biscuits that have been made for over a century in Villa San Giovanni, the Costa Viola town facing the Strait of Messina. Their name, according to a hypothesis reported by Slow Food, may come from the way they were once baked: in wood stoves that smoked like pipes.

Production began in the early twentieth century, started by two local pastry-making brothers, and in the following years other pastry makers in town began making them regularly, turning them into a tradition that still marks the local community today.

They have relatives across the Strait, the Messina sweets of the same name, but differ in their thin cut, the larger amount of almonds, a more sparing use of spices and the absence of some of them, such as pepper. Piparelle are a Slow Food Presidium and are listed among Calabria's traditional products.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Piparelle di Villa San Giovanni · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

The production area is the municipality of Villa San Giovanni, in the province of Reggio Calabria. The ingredients are simple: almonds, sugar and wildflower or orange blossom honey are mixed, then cinnamon and cloves are added, the dough is scented with orange essential oil and finally wheat flour is worked in.

The dough is shaped into a log of about half a kilo, baked at 180 degrees for 35-40 minutes. The next day comes the hardest step: the log is cut by hand, with a knife, into slices four millimetres thick, and great skill is needed to keep them even and stop them breaking on the pieces of almond. The slices then go back into the oven at 65 degrees for 10-12 hours.

The Presidium's rules set the origin of the raw materials: wheat flour from Calabria or elsewhere in Italy, honey from beekeepers in the province of Reggio Calabria, almonds from Calabria, Sicily or Apulia, and Calabrian orange essential oil.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Piparelle di Villa San Giovanni

How to recognise it

Piparelle are recognised first of all by their thickness: thin slices of about four millimetres, cut by hand, showing cross-sections of almonds. The long second baking at low temperature makes them dry, and their scent comes from honey, cinnamon, cloves and orange essential oil.

Compared with their Messina namesakes, they are richer in almonds and more restrained in spices, with no pepper. Hand cutting is what sets them apart: the Presidium also aims to prevent the industrialisation of the process, which would lose the biscuit's artisan and traditional character, and eventually to use only regional ingredients.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Piparelle di Villa San Giovanni

Where to taste it

Piparelle are bought and tasted in Villa San Giovanni, where they are made by the pastry makers of the Presidium community. The town looks closely across the Strait: its port, Punta Pezzo, is the main ferry terminal for Sicily, and life goes on above all along the seafront, with its beach surrounded by orchards and citrus groves. Sights include the churches of the Madonna Immacolata and the Madonna del Rosario and the sanctuary of Maria Santissima delle Grazie.

Villa San Giovanni is a natural stop on a journey along the Costa Viola, the southernmost stretch of Calabria's Tyrrhenian coast, named after a seaweed that tints the water violet at sunset. Scilla, our destination on the same sea, with the Ruffo castle on its rock, completes the itinerary.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Piparelle di Villa San Giovanni · Italia.it — Villa San Giovanni · Italia.it — Costa Viola in Calabria · Italia.it — Scilla

Protection

When

Where

Calabria