In the 1500s, Venetian merchants got ahold of new goods from the New World — the Americas had just been ‘discovered’, and people were excited to try the new foods. Among these new foods was a plant called ‘corn’, or as Venetians (and most countries) called it, mais or maize.

The Venetians were also eager to trade this new good for a profit, and the plant proved excellently suited for the Italian plains, so corn became fairly common in many parts of today’s Italy, as well as the neighboring areas of Switzerland and Slovenia.