Description
The museum Alessandria Città delle Biciclette (ACdB) is a tribute to the primary role which the city and the province of Alessandria played during the heroic age of cycling that embraces the early years of national unity and reaches as far as World War I. ACdB tells the story of the first bicycle to reach Italy in 1867, thanks to Carlo Michel, a brewer from Alessandria, inviting to travel and discover a territory in which the visitor can cycle easily from one museum to another. Even better, if by bike.
ACdB is a place of memory and identity, which unites the families of past Champions, of the competitive cyclists the province of Alessandria has been able to produce since road and
track competitions have existed,
in a space of time that has now exceeded the century. These include Coppi, Girardengo, Cuniolo, Malabrocca, Meazzo, and for the families of journalists and storytellers of cycling and many more who have contributed from the start with important loans.
AcdB tells the story of the artisan Giovanni Maino, of Eliso Rivera, co-founder of the “Gazzetta dello Sport” newspaper, of the female workers of the "Borsalino” hat factory, always photographed on their inseparable bikes, of the Circolo Velocipedisti Alessandrino; of the rivalry between Giovanni Cuniolo (“Manina”) from Tortona and Giovanni Gerbi, (“Diavolo Rosso”), from Asti, to the vicissitudes of champions like Costante Girardengo and Fausto Coppi. The Museum of Alessandria wants to create networked systems with the open-air museum of Castellania and its Casa Coppi and with the Campionissimi of Novi Ligure. A network which proposes to introduce Monferrato and its excellence to all those who appreciate culture, history, beauty, nature, wellness and open-air sports to promote the invention of the bicycle, even beyond provincial borders. ACdB is twinned with the Cycling Museum Madonna del Ghisallo of Magreglio (CO).