About "Bresciani nel Mondo - Northern California"

Welcome to all Brescians in the world! As you will find out soon enough, if you don't already know, there is a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to Brescian heritage.

Brescia is an ancient province in Northern Italy. As the geographical map to the right doesn't really show, it lays to the left of the huge beautiful Lake Garda, to the bottom of the pre-Alpine mountains, to the top of the Po Valley, and to the right of the rest of Lombardy.

Although part of historical Lombardy, it's also historically tied to the Veneto. It's made up of two distinct regions in of itself: Brescia proper to the south, and the mountainous Valle Camonica to the north. The Camonica could just as easily be a province itself, with a history that goes back at least 8,000 years.

The gun was invented in Brescia, and the Beretta family has been producing them since 1526. All four branches of the U.S. military use Berettas, long considered by most to be the finest firearms manufacturer in the world. The province is also long well-known for it's manufacture of the violin. Brescia was crucial to the success of the 1,000 year Venetian Empire, especially it's arms manufacturing.

There's so much to say that I will just cut it short for now. I mainly wanted to just say hello and welcome you to this organization. It will be more of a loose association, and hopefully will encourage other similar groups around the world. Certainly Northern California was settled by many Northern Italian immigrants, but mostly from the western part of Northern Italy. Our original plan was to create a large web presence for Bresciani nel Mondo, to spread it around the world, but that plan has been scrapped. We still would like Americans, Canadians, Australians, Angentinians, South Africans, etc. to create similar groups, and perhaps we can all get together at some later point. Needless to say, Brescian heritage is certainly something to be very proud of!