What is Bra known for?

International headquarters of the Slow Food movement, founded in town by Carlo Petrini in 1986; host of the biennial Cheese fair. Cow's-milk cheese (with up to 10% sheep or goat) granted DOC in 1982 and DOP in 1996, in hard (duro) and tender (tenero) forms. Ground veal sausage with the local right to be eaten raw; subject of the BRA'S festival in the centro storico.

When is the best time to visit Bra?

Apr–Oct. April through June and September into October are the months Bra runs cleanest. The Roero hills colour up around the town, the cellars hold tastings, and the Cheese fair takes the centro storico in September of odd years. July and August get hot in the Tanaro plain below, and the porticoes on Corso Garibaldi become the cool part of town between four and seven in the afternoon. November through March is quiet, often with fog rising from the river. The cafés on Via Cavour keep their pace, the university stays in session in Pollenzo, and a winter visit gets the Zizzola and its panorama with no other walkers on the hill.

Bra is a comune in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont region of Italy, about 58 kilometers from Torino.

From Torino, Bra is roughly 58 km by road.

Piedmont · Cuneo

Bra

A Roero town where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.

Known for

SLOW FOOD
International headquarters of the Slow Food movement, founded in town by Carlo Petrini in 1986; host of the biennial Cheese fair.
BRA DOP
Cow's-milk cheese (with up to 10% sheep or goat) granted DOC in 1982 and DOP in 1996, in hard (duro) and tender (tenero) forms.
SALSICCIA DI BRA
Ground veal sausage with the local right to be eaten raw; subject of the BRA'S festival in the centro storico.

When to visit

Best · Apr–Oct

Best
Hot or crowded
Quiet
Mostly closed

The festa: santuario della Madonna dei Fiori, lunedì successivo alla terza domenica

Why come

Bra sits in the Roero hills, fifty kilometers southeast of Torino, on the north edge of the Langhe-Roero-Monferrato UNESCO wine landscape. The old center, with its porticoed Corso Garibaldi and Via Cavour, is the working core of town; above it a nineteenth-century pavilion looks out over the surrounding hills, and below, on the Tanaro, a frazione occupies the site of a Roman colony inside a former Savoy royal estate. Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food here in 1986 in response to a McDonald's planned next to the Spanish Steps in Rome, and the movement's headquarters has stayed in town since.

In 1999 Bra was one of the four founding cities of Cittaslow, the small-town quality-of-life network. The biennial Cheese fair, the largest event in the world for raw-milk cheeses, fills the old center in odd-numbered Septembers, alongside the town's own DOP cheese and its ground veal sausage, eaten raw by local custom. A town this size holding a global food movement, a gastronomic university, and a Roman site within its own borders is not an accident of promotion: it reflects a place that has treated eating and its history as civic matters worth building institutions around.

The Sunday letter

We haven’t written Bra’s letter yet.

One town every Sunday, with the photo, the food, the festa. Be there when this one comes up. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.

What to see

La Zizzola
Octagonal pavilion on the hill above town, reached as the best panoramic point over the Langhe and Roero.
Palazzo Mathis
Fourteenth-century palazzo on the central piazza with frescoed main floor and eighteenth-century oil-painted door covers, now used for exhibitions.
Palazzo Traversa
Fifteenth-century building housing the Museo di Archeologia, Storia e Arte, with finds from the Roman colony of Pollentia.
Pollenzo
Frazione on the Tanaro built over the Roman Pollentia; the former Savoy royal estate there now houses the gastronomic university.
Centro storico
Long porticoed Corso Garibaldi and Via Cavour, lined with Piedmontese Baroque palazzi and historic cafés.

The slow-trip planner

Building a trip? Find where Bra fits in a slow Italy circuit.

Answer five questions. We will shape a geographically coherent slow trip from the 1,000 Italian towns most travelers skip. Yours to save and share.

Plan your trip

Signature product

Bra DOPDOP

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.

See the towns we cover in the zone of Bra DOP.

Signature dish

Salsiccia di BraMeat

A soft, finely minced raw veal sausage, once granted a special licence to be eaten uncooked.

See every town in our catalogue with a dish of its own.

Through the year

What happens here

Feasts and festivals that come back year after year. We give the month rather than the date, because the date moves and the month rarely does. Check with the source before you plan a journey around one.

Bra's - Brafood festival
usually held in September. Visit LMR - Langhe Monferrato Roero calendario eventi

Living here

Population 29,523
Commuter belti
Pharmacy in town
High school within a 30-minute drive
Train station in the comune
Nearest airport Turin, 1 h 13 min drive
Regional capital Torino, 54 min drive

Tags & datadesignations · numbers · sources

Recognised as

The numbers

Elevation: 290 m
Population: 29,523
Surface area: 59.53 km²

On the map

Google Maps Apple Maps Directions from Torino

These figures were compiled from public directories — ISTAT, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata — and from the official listings of the guides named on this page. Town details change; verify with official sources before you travel.

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