Don Camillo church

Don Camillo is the main character created by the Italian writer and journalist Giovannino Guareschi, and is based on the historical Roman Catholic priest, WWII partisan and detainee of the concentration camps of Dachau and Mauthausen Don Camillo Valota [1]. Don Camillo is one of two protagonists, the other being the communist mayor of the town, known to everyone as Peppone. The stories are set in what Guareschi refers to as a "small world" and are an excellent representation of what rural Italy was like after the second world war. Most of the Don Camillo stories came out in the weekly magazine Candido, founded by Guareschi with Giovanni Mosca. These "Small World" ("Piccolo Mondo") stories amounted to 347 in total and were put together and published in eight books, only the first three of which were published when Guareschi was still alive.