Themed picks · Turin · Slow Food
10 Slow Food comuni near Turin
Ten towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. In Turin's center a square meter costs €1,600 to €4,500; here it starts at €530, in Cocconato.
10 comuni · within 90 minutes of Turin · drive times by road from the city center
Slow Food was founded in Bra, a small comune 50 kilometers south of Turin, in 1986. The organisation's headquarters is still there, and the territorial map it drew of the surrounding country (the Langhe, the Roero, the Monferrato) is now also the territorial map of Italian food's most-cited region. Barolo, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, hazelnut, white truffle, Castelmagno, the salumi of the Cuneo plain. Most of it is produced inside a 90-minute drive of Turin.
Turin is the right base because it is the only Piemontese city with the rail and motorway centrality to put all three sub-regions on day-trip range. The Langhe is about an hour south (Alba, Barolo, La Morra), with the Roero just north of it across the Tanaro. The Monferrato is an hour to an hour and a half east and southeast (Cocconato, Nizza Monferrato, Casale). And the alpine valleys west (Susa, Pinerolo) are under an hour's drive. The food at each stretch is different and the dialects shift inside an hour's drive.
We picked ten comuni that anchor the Slow Food map, ranked by Cittaslow (the spinoff certification, also founded in Italy in 1999), the wine, oil and truffle trails, Borghi più belli and a signature DOP or DOCG product. Drive times below are by road from the center of Turin.
The towns
1Cuneo · Piemonte · 58 min from Turin
Alba
Best for truffle season. It belongs to the national association of truffle towns.
homes €1,700 to €2,550 a m² in the center · 30,987 people
The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.
Italy's most prized white truffle, hunted in the woods around Alba from October through January.
Signature product: Tartufo Bianco d'Alba (IGP).
2Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h 3 min from Turin
Barolo
Best for a small town. 617 people live here.
homes €980 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 617 people
A Langhe borgo at 301 meters whose Castello Falletti gave its name to the wine the Marchesi turned dry in the 1830s with Cavour's help.
100% Nebbiolo, the king of Piemonte, from eleven communes around the village that shares its name.
Signature product: Barolo DOCG.
The catch: It has lost 18% of its people since 2015.
3Cuneo · Piemonte · 54 min from Turin
Bra
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
homes €970 to €1,550 a m² in the center · 29,673 people
A Roero town at 290 meters where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.
Cuneo-province cow's-milk cheese, semi-hard, in two ages (tenero, duro); named for the town that holds the late-September Slow Food cheese fair.
Cittaslow-certified.
4Asti · Piemonte · 57 min from Turin
Cocconato
Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists Cantina Nicola here.
homes €530 to €780 a m² in the center · 1,399 people
A Monferrato ridge town at 491 meters with a microclimate mild enough to grow palms and olives this far north.
Microclimate on the south-facing ridge mild enough for palms, olives and mimosas at 491 meters in northern Piedmont.
Named on the Città del Vino trail.
5Cuneo · Piemonte · 59 min from Turin
La Morra
Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.
homes €1,100 to €1,600 a m² in the center · 2,658 people
The hilltop above the Barolo zone, more Nebbiolo acreage than any other commune.
One of eleven Barolo-producing communes; La Morra's vineyards face the village across the valley.
6Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h from Turin
Verduno
Best for a small town. 564 people live here.
homes €870 to €1,250 a m² in the center · 564 people
A Langhe hilltop at 381 meters, the home village of the Pelaverga grape.
Barolo commune at the northern edge of the production zone.
7Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h 2 min from Turin
Guarene
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
homes €970 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 3,532 people
A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.
Eighteenth-century baroque castle of the Roero bankers of Asti, rebuilt from 1726, now a Relais & Châteaux hotel and museum.
8Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h 4 min from Turin
Serralunga d'Alba
Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.
homes €1,000 to €1,500 a m² in the center · 497 people
A 497-inhabitant Barolo cru village at 414 meters on a Langhe ridge, crowned by a 14th-century French-style donjon castle of the Falletti.
Barolo commune on the eastern ridge, known for the most structured, longest-aging wines of the zone.
9Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h 6 min from Turin
Neive
Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.
homes €860 to €1,250 a m² in the center · 3,211 people
A hilltop borgo at 308 meters in the Barbaresco zone, named for the Roman gens Naevia, with four wines in commercial volume.
One of three Barbaresco-producing communes; vineyards on the slopes above the Tanaro river.
Signature product: Barbaresco DOCG.
10Cuneo · Piemonte · 1 h 8 min from Turin
Monforte d'Alba
Best for Barolo DOCG. The town gives its name to Barolo DOCG.
homes €980 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 1,874 people
A Barolo cru village at 480 meters where the Cathars were burned in 1028 and where the summer jazz festival fills the old piazza.
Barolo commune in the south of the production zone.
We write about towns like these one town at a time, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Turin.
Why Turin is the base
Turin gives you the city itself (Egyptian Museum, Royal Palace, Mole Antonelliana, the porticoes), the Slow Food university just south at Pollenzo, and direct rail or motorway access to every Piemontese food zone. The cooking in the city closes the loop: the historic cafés (Mulassano, Baratti & Milano) for the vermouth that was invented here; Tre Galline, Consorzio and Vintage 1997 for the heavier Piemontese register; the Saturday Porta Palazzo market for everything that came in from the surrounding hills that morning.
When to go
October and November for white-truffle season in Alba (the fair runs weekends from early October to early December) and for the hazelnut harvest in the Roero. April through June for the spring sagre and the asparagus around Santena and Poirino. Late September for the Cheese fair in Bra (biannual, odd years). Mid-summer is the off-season because the towns empty out into the alpine valleys.
Questions people ask
- Where is Slow Food headquartered?
- In Bra, a comune of about 30,000 people in the Roero, 50 kilometers south of Turin. The movement was founded there in 1986 by Carlo Petrini. The Università di Scienze Gastronomiche, the Slow Food university, sits at Pollenzo just east of Bra.
- When is the Alba White Truffle Fair?
- Weekends from the first Saturday of October through the first weekend of December, every year. The covered market in central Alba is the main venue; the surrounding restaurants and cellars run their own programming through the season.
- What is the difference between Barolo and Barbaresco?
- Both are made from 100% Nebbiolo, both are DOCG, and both come from a small group of comuni in the Langhe. Barolo's villages (Barolo, La Morra, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga d'Alba, Monforte d'Alba) sit on heavier, more tannic soil and produce wines that need longer aging. Barbaresco's three comuni (Barbaresco, Treiso, Neive) produce a slightly lighter, earlier-drinking wine.
- Is Cittaslow the same as Slow Food?
- No. Cittaslow is a separate organisation, founded in 1999 by the mayors of four Italian towns (Bra, Greve in Chianti, Orvieto, Positano) and Carlo Petrini. Cittaslow certifies whole comuni against a set of urban-quality criteria (food, environment, hospitality, infrastructure). Slow Food certifies products and producers.
How we picked these · We took every Piemonte town in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Turin by car (37 of them), kept the 22 carrying Cittaslow, a Città del Vino, Città dell'Olio or Città del Tartufo designation, Borghi più belli or a signature protected product, and ranked them by how many of those they hold and how close they are. The Langhe and the Roero anchor the list, with Cocconato in the Monferrato hills.
Keep browsing
