Church of St. Onorato Webcam in Piazza della Chiesa, Torriglia

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16:01

Church of St. Onorato Webcam in Piazza della Chiesa, Torriglia

At first glance, Torriglia just about comes at the top of the list of sleepy towns and villages in Italy. Watch this live feed streaming from the Piazza della Chiesa and you may well come to realise that even the proverbial pigeons that inhabit many town squares are absent. That could be because they’ve been fed too much pasta or cookie crumbs and are too plump to fly or that there are better and more interesting peckings elsewhere. But don’t be fooled by the superficial tranquility. There’s more to this town than initially meets the eye.

While the Church of St. Onorato is an undeniably attractive building and quite possibly the main attraction on a Sunday for most folk there, it’s not all this town has to boast about. Located in the municipality of Liguria, a northwestern region of Italy, Torriglia has become renowned for unusual celestial visits. No, they’re not the type of visits from celestial beings, or better said saintly sightings, that inspire religious pilgrimages, but more those of the unidentified flying object kind.

The alleged UFO sighting occurred in the late 1970s and happened to a resident of the town who was at the time employed as a security guard. Not content with receiving just one visit from a species from outer space, the same resident dutifully reported several more visits over the duration of a decade. Sadly, the validity of those alien visits has remained an unproven controversy for almost fifty years.

Is Torriglia famous for anything else? Indeed it is. A star-shaped biscuit, which looks more like a daisy than a star, known as the canestrelletto di torriglia. Whether the biscuit’s shape has been influenced by the UFO sightings or not isn’t clear. But let’s face it, how many biscuits get a festival held in their honour every year? Will you spot a UFO on this cam? Probably not, but then again, stranger things have been known to happen in Torriglia so keep your eyes peeled.