Pecora Brogna

Kept for centuries on the Lessinia pastures, part of them now inside the Monti Lessini regional park. Sheep have been here since the Neolithic, but it was the arrival of the Cimbri in the 14th century, settlers of Bavarian and Tyrolean origin, that cleared the mountains and made herding serious. Between the 14th and 15th centuries Verona's woollen cloth went as far as northern Europe against the wool of Flanders and England, and the city still carries the traces: the Capitello dell'Agnello, whose column holds a sheep much like a Brogna, emblem of the Arte della Lana, and the Sgarzarie loggia where the cloth was sold. From the 16th century silk undercut the wool trade.