Bergamo can boast a special place in the history of Italian ice cream thanks to the birth of stracciatella, a flavour that has now become a classic all over the world. It was invented in 1961 by Enrico Panattoni, a Tuscan originally from Altopascio who, after the war, moved to Lombardy and opened a small shop in Bergamo Alta. Initially, he sold castagnaccio (chestnut cake), but soon devoted himself to the art of ice cream making, to the point of leaving an indelible mark. “Perhaps other ice-cream makers had already experimented with the combination of fiordilatte and chocolate in pieces,” says his grandson Niccolò Panattoni, who runs the historic La Marianna ice-cream parlour today, “but it was my grandfather who perfected the recipe and gave it the name by which we know it today”. Stracciatella was born in Italy at the height of its economic boom, when the range of flavours was still rather limited. Panattoni's intuition was to pour melted chocolate into the fiordilatte ice cream during the whisking process: the cold breaks it up into fine fragments, creating a “ragged” or “stracciato”  effect that immediately won over the public. Curiously enough, the long Italian tradition of ice cream has its roots a long way back: from Sicily influenced by Arab culture, via the Dolomites of Veneto, to even China, where the first historical traces of cold desserts can be found. The ice cream cone, on the other hand, is an all-Italian invention, attributed to Italo Marchioni, originally from Vodo di Cadore, who emigrated to the United States at the end of the 19th century. Today, the stracciatella is not just a flavour, but a symbol of Italian craftsmanship, born by chance and become an icon of Made in Italy around the world.