Riccardo Terossi has a strong passion for the work of Professor Ezio Marchi:

“Ezio Marchi had a very strong personality”

The white giant didn’t show up all of a sudden in the Valdichiana. The Etrurians sacrificed the ancestors of the Chianina to their gods and later in history farmers used the animal to plough the land. Now, the Chianina cattle are mainly known for their meat.

A big , white sacrificed animal

The Chianina is an inseparable part of the history of the Valdichiana. The breed has its roots in Tuscany and Umbria. Not long ago a bull’s head of a Chianina ancestor was dug up in Asciano; it dated back from the first century A.C. The Etrurians sacrificed the ancestors of the Chianina in an attempt to please their gods. They chose the most beautiful and the biggest animal for this sacral purpose.

An old portret of professor Ezio Marchi

Bull Banino

Professor Ezio Marchi was the first professor who came up with the idea to select the best Chianina cattle and to breed with them. In that manner the breed would become stronger and better and above all, it would produce more meat. “Marchi was a deserving researcher. He worked in the field as well as in the laboratory. He did his first experiments with a bull named Banino. He crossbred the bull with different cows and selected the best calves,” Riccardo Terossi, archivist of the Ezio Marchi museum explains.
“The more serious work began around 1930, when Professor Giuliani set up the zoology department of the University of Florence. He devoted himself to fundamental scientific research. But the real founder of the selection methods is Marchi.”

 Social(ist) conviction

Terossi wants to keep the history and the memory of Marchi alive. “A couple of years ago, there was nobody who knew who Marchi was. We opened the museum with the cultural circle and we’ve put his memory in the spotlights again. You can notice that people perfectly know what you are talking about when you talk about Marchi,” Terossi adds.
The museum possesses numerous documents of Marchi. Two old cupboards of Marchi’s house give an idea of the living environment and passion of the professor. “There was much poverty in the region at the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Marchi wanted to improve the lives of the people. So you could say that his social(ist) conviction inspired him to start breeding selections,” says Terossi. “In 1892, a socialist party was founded in Italy. Marchi was the first man of the Valdichiana who became a politician. He had a very strong personality.”

The statue of Ezio Marchi in Bettolle

Fatal ear disease

Marchi received plenty of recognition for his work, he taught at the prestigious University of Perugia and he got an award of the University of Pisa. His research wasn’t restricted to the Chianina only; he was sent out by the ministry of agriculture for a research mission to Eritrea, an Italian colony in those times,. “Marchi unexpectedly died at the age of thirty-nine, of a fatal ear disease. His achievements were many with an eye to his rather short life. I can only have great respect for that,” Terossi concludes.

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