Alessandria Provincia di Alessandria
Alessandria Province has been a land of wines, arms, and nobles. Its hills are interspaced with mountains and plains. It is a province characterized by many different kinds of traditions. For example, there is the tradition of the goldsmiths that makes Valenza Po one of the international centres of this fine art. The health spas at Acqui Terme have been famous ever since the time of Ancient Rome. There is the chocolate and candy industry at Novi Ligure and historical feeling of the old centre of Casale, the city whose siege is recounted in Umberto Eco’s novel, The Island of the Day Before. Alessandria Province offers interesting artistic-archaeological sites, such as the ancient Roman settlement at Libarna, where visitors can admire the ruins of the amphitheatre, the baths, and the forum, tombs and houses. There also is the Roman pool carved out of the rocks at Acqui. The Basilica della Madonna della Guardia is an important stop on the “route of the faith.” It is a sanctuary built in the 1930s by Don Orione, who founded his first children’s boarding school at Tortona. The Monferrato area has been termed the “land of colours,” a real riot of gold tones in its fields of wheat and corn. There are the fall shades and vermilions of the vineyards growing the red wines, Brachetto d’Acqui and Dolcetto d’Ovada. There are the glowing colours of strawberries and cherries, which fill the valleys around Tortona. These real taste treats are not the only ones. There are also the special cookies - amaretti, krumiri, baci di dama and canestrelli. The green of the forests stands out in this expanse of nature, where visitors can go looking for mushrooms or chestnuts. In the Ovada area the Orba Nature Reserve rises from the banks of the Orba River and features a rich array of flora and fauna. If you close your eyes in the Monferrato hills and use your imagination, you can hear the fast-paced pedalling of Fausto Coppi, the popular Italian bicycling champion of the 1940s and 1950s. The Regional Museum of Cycling at Novi Ligure has been dedicated to him.
Information
Atl Alessandria
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Places
Forte di Fenestrelle
The largest fortified structure in Europe and the longest wall-structure in the world after the Great Wall of China: a 635-meter inclination, 3 km long, 1,300,000 square meters large, 4,000 steps in the Scala Coperta (Covered Staircase), 2,500 steps in the Scala Reale (Royal Staircase), 5 drawbridges, and 183 lights to illuminate the interior.
Villa Taranto Botanical Gardens
Villa Taranto and its gardens, which look out over Lago Maggiore, have a vast botanical trove that includes about 1,000 plants, which until today had never been cultivated in Italy, and about 20,000 varieties and species of particular botanical importance.
Biblioteca Reale di Torino
The Biblioteca Reale (Royal Library) houses important collections of manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts, and engravings. Besides its 2,000 drawings, it has several drawings by Leonard Da Vinci, among which are: the Self-Portrait, the Volto dell’Angelo (the Angel’s Face), the preliminary drawing for the Vergine delle Rocce (Virgin of the Rocks), and the Codice sul Volo (Codex on the Flight of Birds).
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People
Walter Dang
“Torino’s ladies are the ideal interpreters of my creations, balanced between classicism and experimentation. They never much attention to brand names, dressing in an understated way focusing on substance and not appearance. They want to be original without being brash.”
Emanuele Severino
“Piemonte is a land of excellent cuisine and extraordinary wines. I was deeply impressed by the Langhe landscape. To admire these hills makes you immediately understand the importance that the landscape held for a writer like Cesare Pavese or Beppe Fenoglio. In these past days, I think I felt the same sensations that Pavese did when he came into contact with his hills.”
Gianni Farinetti
"I was born in Bra, in the Langhe. I have a true affinity for the countryside. Piemonte is a land rich in moods and history, literary history as well: Arpino, Levi, Ginzburg, and the best loved of all, Beppe Fenoglio – but also many recent writers. In fact, no other Italian city has produced so many beginnings in the last several years as Torino."
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