The 6 prettiest villages that eat well in Piemonte

1. Barolo

Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.

1 h 3 min from Turin · homes €980 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 617 people

Why visit Barolo

Barolo sits at 301 meters on a Langhe hilltop fifty-five kilometers south of Torino, in the heart of the DOCG appellation that takes its name. The Castello Falletti rises from the center of the village; its oldest walls go back to the tenth century, when Berengar I of Italy granted local lords permission to fortify against Hungarian and Saracen raids.

The Falletti family acquired Barolo from Alba in 1250, settled in the castle by 1325, and held it for more than six centuries. In the 1830s the Marchesi Tancredi and Giulia Falletti, alongside Camillo Benso di Cavour and his oenologist Paolo Francesco Staglieno, are credited with pushing the Nebbiolo of these hills toward dry, age-worthy wine.

The village bought the castle by public subscription in 1970. Since 2010 it has housed the WiMu, a wine museum laid out by François Confino.

The Cannubi cru, on the next hill, is said to be the first vineyard name in the appellation to appear in writing, on a bottle dated 1752. Barolo is one of eleven communes inside the DOCG zone and part of the UNESCO Langhe-Roero and Monferrato landscape inscribed in 2014.

Barolo Friends (Gambero Rosso), Locanda in Cannubi (Gambero Rosso) and Marchesi di Barolo (World's 50 Best) are listed in food guides.

The catch: It has lost 18% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Barolo

• Castello Falletti. Tenth-century castle rebuilt by the Falletti, who held Barolo from 1250, bought by the comune in 1970, now home to the WiMu wine museum since 2010.
• WiMu - Museo del Vino. Wine museum inside the castle, designed by François Confino, with the Regional Wine Library of Barolo in the cellars.
• Vigneto Cannubi. Historic cru on the hill east of the village, its name said to appear on a bottle dated 1752, the earliest written vineyard name in Barolo.

How to get to Barolo

Turin is about 1 h 3 min away by road.

Everything we know about Barolo

2. Orta San Giulio

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

46 min from Novara · homes €1,700 to €3,000 a m² in the center · 1,102 people

Why visit Orta San Giulio

The town occupies a promontory pushed into the eastern shore of the lake, facing the small island 275 meters long and 140 meters wide. The two are close enough that the island reads as an extension of the town rather than a separate place, and a five-minute motorboat from the piazza is the only way across.

The old town holds three of Italy's quality marks at once: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, and the UNESCO inscription of 2003. The relationship between the three parts of the town explains how it works: the waterfront square and its lanes sit at lake level, facing the island directly across the water, while the hill above holds the devotional complex, reached by climbing away from the shore rather than along it.

Piazza Motta was also the seat of the Comunità della Riviera di San Giulio, an autonomous federation of lake towns that survived from the Middle Ages to the mid-eighteenth century, which is why the square, not the hill or the island, was built as a civic center. What results is a town in three registers at once: civic life at the water's edge, monastic life offshore, and devotional life on the hill above, each occupying its own ground and visible from the others.

Villa Crespi (MICHELIN and L'Espresso) and Andrea Monesi - Locanda di Orta (MICHELIN) are listed in food guides.

What to see in Orta San Giulio

• Basilica di San Giulio. Serpentine ambo inside and a silver shrine dated 1697. Reached by boat, the basilica stands close to the water's edge, the focal point of the view from every point on the promontory.
• Piazza Motta and Palazzo della Comunità. The broletto's arcades face the water directly, and the square narrows toward the boat landing where the crossing to the island begins.
• Sacro Monte di Orta. The chapels climb the wooded hillside in sequence, each framing a scene, with the town and the lake opening up in views between them as the path gains height.

How to get to Orta San Giulio

It has its own railway station. Novara is about 46 min away by road. The full route from Milan.

Everything we know about Orta San Giulio

3. Cocconato

Best for a small town. 1,399 people live here.

57 min from Turin · homes €530 to €780 a m² in the center · 1,399 people

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 holds 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 is listed in Gambero Rosso.

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

Turin is about 57 min away by road. The full route from Turin.

Everything we know about Cocconato

4. Monforte d'Alba

Best for Barolo DOCG. The town gives its name to Barolo DOCG.

1 h 8 min from Turin · homes €980 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 1,874 people

Why visit Monforte d'Alba

Monforte d'Alba sits at 480 meters in the southeastern corner of the Barolo zone, sixty kilometers from Torino. The name is from Latin mons fortis, fortified hill, and the medieval village climbed steep enough to make it nearly impregnable.

In 1028, Archbishop Ariberto d'Intimiano of Milan had the inhabitants of a heretical community here, later identified as Cathars, captured and burned in Milan to halt the spread of their teaching. Monforte is one of the eleven Barolo communes and accounts for some of the most structured, tannic wines in the zone, particularly from the Bussia and Ginestra crus.

At the top of the village, the Auditorium Horszowski occupies what was once the main square: an open-air natural amphitheater of 800 seats named for the pianist Mieczysław Horszowski, who opened it with a concert in 1986. The Monfortinjazz festival has run here every summer since 1976.

Borgo Sant'Anna (MICHELIN and L'Espresso), FRE (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Trattoria della Posta (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and 6 more places are listed in food guides.

What to see in Monforte d'Alba

• Auditorium Horszowski. Open-air amphitheater for 800 carved into the old village square in 1986, named for the pianist who opened it that year.
• Centro storico. Steep medieval village climbing to the old piazza, with Renaissance palazzi and the surviving bell tower of Sant'Agostino.
• Chiesa di Santa Elisabetta. Baroque oratory beside the Palazzo Scarampi at the top of the village, framing the back wall of the Horszowski stage.

How to get to Monforte d'Alba

Turin is about 1 h 8 min away by road.

Everything we know about Monforte d'Alba

5. Guarene

Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.

1 h 2 min from Turin · homes €970 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 3,532 people

Why visit Guarene

Guarene sits at 360 meters on the left bank of the Tanaro, the last hill of the Roero before the river crosses to Alba and the Langhe. The Roero family, powerful Asti bankers, took the village in 1379 and held it until the line ended with Count Alessandro in 1899.

Count Carlo Giacinto Roero rebuilt the medieval fortress between 1726 and his death, turning it into a baroque summer residence; his sons completed the work and hosted the king and queen of Sardinia here in 1773. The castle is now a Relais & Châteaux hotel with a small museum.

On the slope below the village, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opened Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in 1997 as its first contemporary art space; the foundation added an open-air sculpture park in 2019 with works by Carsten Höller, Marguerite Humeau, and Paul Kneale set among pear orchards and Nebbiolo rows. The town holds four designations at once: Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, Spighe Verdi and Città del Vino.

Io e Luna (MICHELIN), Limonaia del Castello di Guarene (Gambero Rosso) and Pico Bistrot in Madernassa (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

What to see in Guarene

• Castello di Guarene. Eighteenth-century baroque castle rebuilt 1726 by Count Carlo Giacinto Roero from a medieval fortress, now a Relais & Châteaux hotel.
• Palazzo Re Rebaudengo. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo's first contemporary art space, opened 1997 in an eighteenth-century palazzo in the village.
• Parco d'arte Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Open-air sculpture park opened 2019 with works by Carsten Höller, Marguerite Humeau, and Paul Kneale among Nebbiolo rows and pear orchards.

How to get to Guarene

Turin is about 1 h 2 min away by road.

Everything we know about Guarene

6. Biella

Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.

1 h 3 min from Novara · homes €650 to €910 a m² in the center · 43,181 people

Why visit Biella

Biella sits at 417 meters at the foot of the Biellese Alps, in a basin where fast Alpine streams cut down from Mont Mars and the Oropa range. The statutes of 1245 already named the woolworkers' and weavers' guilds, and the city built itself around them: by the nineteenth century, vertical mills along the streams had turned Biella into the Manchester of Italy.

The names still on the labels, Zegna, Cerruti, Piacenza, Fila, were founded in the Biellese. The upper town, Biella Piazzo, sits above the modern Piano on a small hill, reached since 1885 by a water-counterbalance funicular that still runs the same 60-meter climb.

The Romanesque Baptistery on Piazza Duomo is the city's oldest stone, ninth or tenth century, set next to the cathedral. Above the city, the Sacro Monte di Oropa belongs to the UNESCO Sacri Monti site, and Biella was named a UNESCO Creative City for Crafts and Folk Art in 2019.

Il Patio (MICHELIN), Matteo Ristorante (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Regallo (MICHELIN) and 2 more places are listed in food guides.

What to see in Biella

• Biella Piazzo. Medieval upper town on a small hill above the modern Piano, with arcaded palazzi and narrow stone streets, reached by funicular since 1885.
• Funicolare del Piazzo. Historic funicular opened in December 1885, covering a 60-meter altitude gradient in 177 meters between Via Curiel and Via Avogadro.
• Battistero di Biella. Romanesque baptistery on Piazza Duomo, ninth to tenth century, the oldest standing monument in the city.

How to get to Biella

It has its own railway station. Novara is about 1 h 3 min away by road. The full route from Turin.

Everything we know about Biella