Why Does The Alfa Romeo Badge Have A Serpent On It?

Italian car manufacturers love an animal on their badges. The Ferrari prancing horse is one of the most iconic bits of branding full stop, and you could make a case that Lamborghini’s bull is up there, too.

Abarth has the scorpion, of course, and if you want to go niche, we can touch upon Cizeta’s with a triple-threat of some kind of wildcat. Then there’s Alfa Romeo, which has a serpent eating a human on it. What?

That’s been the case pretty much since the inception of Alfa Romeo in 1910, founded by Cavaliere Ugo Stella as A.L.F.A. Neither of whom have a great link to the story of the logo.

Rather, that boils down to the first chief engineer of the company, Giuseppe Merosi. With development underway of the 24 HP and 12 HP, the newly formed manufacturer was in need of a logo.

As the story goes, this is where an illustrator by the name of Romano Cattaneo comes into play. A friend of Merosi, Cattaneo found his eyes drawn towards Sforza Castle in Milan, the hometown of then-A.L.F.A while waiting for a tram.

More specifically, he was looking at the main tower which adorned the Biscione, the historical symbol of Milan. That symbol? A serpent swallowing a whole child in its mouth. I can’t say that would have inspired me to think about Italian race cars at the time, but sure.

I’m no historian (my A-Level history teacher could attest to that), so we couldn’t give you the deep dive as to its origins, just that it was the coat of arms of the Visconti family, which took rule of Milan in the 13th century.

Regardless, that gave Cattaneo an idea to present to his friend Merosi. He believed A.L.F.A needed to represent its home town – the Biscione on one side, and the flag of Milan to its left (and not the Saint George’s Cross used as England’s flag).

From there, a dark blue roundel played host to the gold lettering of ‘ALFA’ and ‘MILANO’, which hasn’t changed all that much over the years. Merosi obviously liked it, and the A.L.F.A logo was born.

‘Romeo’ would find its way there when the company became Alfa-Romeo in 1920 following its takeover by Nicola Romeo, while a brief post-WWII spell saw the badge overhauled with a full red background and gold for the rest of it.

That switched back to its contemporary colours pretty quickly, before its last major permanent change came in 1972 – with ‘MILANO’ dropped and just ‘Alfa-Romeo’ adorned on the roundel.

So, there you have it. Next time you’re at a pub quiz and “Which car manufacturer’s logo has a serpent eating a child on?” comes up, you can send thanks our way.