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 is the only commune in the province of Asti to hold the Bandiera Arancione, a fitting distinction for a ridge that has been organizing the same handful of parts, fief, palace, church, frazioni, for centuries.