Candelo

Candelo sits on the right bank of the Cervo torrent, ten kilometers from Biella, with a third of its territory on the Baraggione plateau, a wild grassland of about 5,000 hectares now protected as the Riserva Naturale delle Baragge. The Ricetto is what people come for. It is a late-medieval fortified shelter built by the local farming community in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: roughly two hundred stone cellule arranged on a pentagonal plan of 13,000 square meters, crossed by five east-west rue and two transverse, the perimeter walls running 470 meters.

Goods, grain, wine and forage were stored here under the protection of the local lord. Only in extreme attack did the population itself withdraw inside. It is the best-preserved structure of its kind in Piedmont. Candelo joined the Borghi più belli d'Italia in 2002 and has held the Bandiera Arancione of the Touring Club Italiano since 2007.