Avigliana

Avigliana sits in the lower Susa Valley, twenty-five kilometers west of Torino at the point where the Alps meet the Po plain. The first castle on Monte Pezzulano was built in 942 by the Arduinici Marquises of Turin and passed to the Counts of Savoy from 1137; Frederick Barbarossa destroyed it and Thomas I of Savoy rebuilt it, before the French marshal Catinat finally demolished it in 1691. The medieval core that grew below the fortress is still ringed by porticoed houses from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

The Chiesa di San Pietro and the Chiesa di San Giovanni hold frescoes spanning the eleventh through the sixteenth century, a run of decoration that outlasted the castle itself. Below the centre, two glacial lakes, Lago Grande and Lago Piccolo, sit at 352 and 356 meters in a natural park established in 1980, while the Via Francigena passes through on its way toward the mountain above. What the town adds up to is a settlement built in layers around a single defensible height, with the ruined fortress marking the summit of Savoy power here and the abbey on the neighboring peak marking its longer, still-standing religious counterpart.