The 6 best hidden towns you can reach by train that eat well within 90 minutes of Torino

Bard

Why visit Bard

Bard sits at the entrance of the Aosta Valley, its single medieval street wedged between the Dora Baltea river and the rocky prominence that carries the fortress above it. The rock has held fortifications since at least the tenth century, when a castle stood on the site of a fifth-century structure attributed to Theodoric.

That older fort was destroyed after the 1800 siege, and Charles Albert of Savoy rebuilt the current three-tier complex on the same ground between 1830 and 1838. The village below is compact by design: one main street, noble houses from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a parish church rebuilt several times over the medieval core.

The rock and the river leave no room for the town to spread, so fortress and village occupy the same narrow footprint, one stacked above the other rather than side by side. What the place adds up to is a defensive chokepoint that never had space to become anything but a single street and the walls above it.

Ad Gallias have been named by a guide.

What to see in Bard

• Forte di Bard. Three terraced levels climb the fortress rock above the village. The current structure replaced an older fort that Napoleon ordered demolished after taking it.
• Museo delle Alpi. Permanent museum inside the fortress, dedicated to the Alps as a geographical, cultural and human space, with rotating contemporary art exhibitions.
• Borgo medievale di Bard. Medieval village stretched along a single main street, lined with fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mansions and noble houses below the fortress rock.

How to get to Bard

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 72 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Bard

Verduno

Why visit Verduno

Verduno sits fifty kilometers south of Torino on a Langhe ridge above the Tanaro, its vineyards the only ones among the eleven Barolo communes to lean partly toward the river plain rather than folding back into the hills. That position, facing the water and the Alps beyond it, sets the village apart from the rest of the DOCG even before the wine is considered.

The other thing that sets it apart is Pelaverga Piccolo, a native black grape cultivated commercially in only three Langhe communes: Verduno, La Morra and Roddi. It yields a light ruby red with strawberry, rose and a distinct white-pepper finish, and the first single-variety Pelaverga vineyard on these slopes was planted in 1972.

Between the castle on the ridge and the vine on the plain-facing slope, Verduno holds two things most of its neighbors do not: a wine that is Barolo's own, structurally, and a wine that belongs to almost nowhere else.

La Sbornia a Verduno, Real Castello have been named by a guide.

What to see in Verduno

• Castello di Verduno. The castle stands on the Langhe ridge and passed to the Burlotto family in 1909, who still work it as a winery producing Barolo and Pelaverga.
• Centro storico. Small hilltop village arranged around the castle and the parish church, with views across the Tanaro and the northern Barolo vineyards.
• Vigneti di Pelaverga. Indigenous Pelaverga Piccolo plantings on the Verduno slopes, including the first single-variety Pelaverga vineyard planted in 1972.

How to get to Verduno

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 60 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Verduno

Cocconato

Why visit Cocconato

Cocconato sits thirty kilometers east of Torino, on a ridge whose south-facing slope catches enough sun to keep olives, palms and mimosas alive this far north, the reason locals call the area the Riviera del Monferrato. From the tenth century the ridge was held by the Radicati counts, a Manfredian family, as an imperial fief for four hundred years, until 1586: the centro storico that survives is their seat, not a later reconstruction.

The town's two anchors sit close together but answer to different authorities. The civic palace, built in the fifteenth century, faces the seventeenth-century parish church of Santa Maria della Consolazione across the upper piazza, government and religion holding opposite ends of the same small square.

Beyond the built center, the ridge opens onto a belvedere looking south across vineyards toward the Alta Langa and, on clear days, the Monviso massif. Since 1970 the six frazioni of Airali, Brina, Colline Magre, San Carlo, Torre and Tuffo have raced their donkeys in the Palio degli Asini, a modern rivalry laid over an old administrative one.

Cocconato is the only commune in the province of Asti to hold the Bandiera Arancione, a fitting distinction for a ridge that has been organizing the same handful of parts, fief, palace, church, frazioni, for centuries.

Cantina Nicola have been named by a guide.

What to see in Cocconato

• Palazzo Comunale. Pointed-arch porticoes and terracotta-framed windows on the Late Gothic facade, still the building the ridge town organizes itself around.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria della Consolazione. Seventeenth-century parish church anchoring the upper piazza, the religious counterweight to the medieval civic palace below it.
• Centro storico. Medieval ridge town that was the seat of the Radicati counts from the tenth century until 1586, well preserved on the south-facing slope.

How to get to Cocconato

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 57 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Cocconato

Cherasco

Why visit Cherasco

Cherasco sits fifty kilometers southeast of Torino, on the terrace where the Stura di Demonte joins the Tanaro. The site put the town on the frontier between the Piedmontese plain and the Langhe hills, and the 1243 planners answered it with a grid: wide streets, arcades, and walls, laid out in a single act rather than grown over centuries.

The castle anchors one end of that plan, the sanctuary another, and the palace where two treaties were signed sits within the same walkable core, so a visitor moving from arch to palace to church is retracing the town's history in the space of a few streets rather than reading it in sequence. That compactness is the point.

A town this size produced a fortress, two treaties of continental consequence, a baroque sanctuary, and a modern research institute, all within the same walled grid on the same river terrace. The snails came last and stayed longest: what began as an institute in 1973 is now the thing Cherasco is best known for, outlasting even the armistice in the town's daily life.

Pasticceria Barbero, La Torre, Autentico and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Cherasco

• Castello Visconteo. Well preserved on the side facing the town, a museum since restoration. Begun by Luchino Visconti, it still dominates the skyline from the terrace below.
• Palazzo Salmatoris. Civic palace where the 1631 peace of Cherasco and the 1796 Napoleonic armistice were signed, now an exhibition venue.
• Santuario della Madonna del Popolo. Baroque sanctuary designed by Sebastiano Taricco, its facade and interior forming one of the architectural anchors of the centro storico.

How to get to Cherasco

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 65 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Cherasco

Canelli

Why visit Canelli

Canelli sits at 157 meters on the Belbo, in the south-east corner of the Asti hills where the Langhe and Monferrato meet. The town is the birthplace of Italian sparkling wine: Carlo Gancia produced the first Asti Spumante here in 1865, on the model of Champagne.

Underneath the centro storico runs a network of cellars cut into the tuff by pickaxe and chisel from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, descending as deep as 32 meters and extending about 20 kilometers through the hill below town. They are called the Cattedrali Sotterranee, and they were inscribed in the UNESCO Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont in 2014.

Above ground, the Sternia, a steep stone street, climbs from the Borgo Villanuova past the Torre dei Contini at 371 meters to the Castello Gancia, a medieval fortress transformed into a noble residence by the Scarampi in the early 1600s and still occupied by the Gancia family. The Belbo grows Moscato Bianco, Barbera and hazelnut.

San Marco, Enoteca di Canelli - Casa Crippa, Civico 15 have been named by a guide.

What to see in Canelli

• Cattedrali Sotterranee. Network of tuff-cut cellars under the centro storico, 20 km of tunnels descending to 32 meters, part of the UNESCO Vineyard Landscape since 2014.
• Castello Gancia. Medieval castle on the Sternia hill above town, transformed into a Scarampi residence in the 1600s and now home of the Gancia family.
• La Sternia. Historic stone-paved street climbing through Borgo Villanuova to the castle, the original access road to the hilltop fortress.

How to get to Canelli

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 82 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Canelli

Nizza Monferrato

Why visit Nizza Monferrato

Nizza Monferrato sits at 267 meters in the south of the Asti province, thirty kilometers from Asti city. It was founded in 1225 by inhabitants displaced from castles in the Alessandria area, joined the Marquisate of Monferrato in 1264, and grew through the 19th century as the commercial center of the Barbera-growing hills around it.

The medieval grid from that 1225 founding still holds the centro storico together, with Renaissance and 18th-century palazzi lining Via Pio Corsi and Via Carlo Alberto, while the vineyards that made the town's fortune spread out beyond it at 200 to 400 meters. That agricultural hinterland and the market town at its center still explain each other: the Foro Boario, the old cattle market on Piazza Garibaldi, is the physical record of a town that existed to move what the hills produced, and it still does that job as a multipurpose hall for the antiques market and for the November weekend known as Nizza è Bagna Cauda.

At that gathering, long communal tables fill with the Cardo Gobbo, a hunchbacked cardoon grown only here and protected by a Slow Food presidium, alongside Barbera raised to DOCG status in 2014. A town built to trade a hillside's produce has ended up defined by two of that produce's most particular forms.

Le Due Lanterne, I Cugini di Torino have been named by a guide.

What to see in Nizza Monferrato

• Piazza Garibaldi and Foro Boario. Main square with the old covered cattle market, now a multipurpose hall used for antiques fairs and the November bagna cauda weekend.
• Chiesa di San Giovanni in Lanero. Baroque parish church on the centro storico, with a tall bell tower visible across the surrounding vineyards.
• Museo Bersano delle Contadinerie. Wine-and-farming museum in a former cellar, with one of the largest collections of historic Piemonte viticulture tools.

How to get to Nizza Monferrato

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 78 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Nizza Monferrato