AQUA TOFANA

Giulia: The Woman Behind the Brand

Rome whispers about a poison that looks like holy water.

They call it Aqua Tofana—a saint-faced bottle passed hand to hand, a rumour with a price, a promise made to desperate wives behind shuttered windows. Men call it evil. Priests call it temptation. The streets call it justice.

But Giulia knows what it really is: a brand built in the cracks of a city that leaves women no safe exits.

When a quiet network of laundresses, servants and midwives begins to fray under pressure—boots on stone, coins offered for silence, and the Church leaning close—Giulia must protect the one person she cannot afford to lose: her daughter. Together they move through Rome disguised as ordinary women, trading in thread-signs and whispered warnings, as a private hunt threatens to become official.

Told in Giulia’s intimate voice and grounded in historical record, AQUA TOFANA is a dark, atmospheric true-crime historical novel about survival, motherhood, and the stories men tell when they need a devil.

In the end, Rome will keep chewing.