Villar San Costanzo

Villar San Costanzo sits at the mouth of the Val Maira, fifteen kilometers northwest of Cuneo. The village and its religious complex sit apart from the reserve on the higher ground above: an abbey anchors the settlement itself, founded in the early eighth century as the commune's historic religious center, while a church and the erosion columns both belong to the slope of the massif that rises over the village.

The name Ciciu is Piedmontese for puppet, given to the columns for their shape: a shaft of earth and stone topped by a glacial erratic boulder, the cap shielding the softer material beneath from rain while the surrounding ground wears away around it. Local legend ties the columns to the same ground as the chapel above them, reading the shapes as the petrified soldiers of Diocletian, cursed by a martyr who gave the village its name, a Roman legionary of the Theban Legion killed nearby around 303. Village below, abbey at its center, and slope above carrying both the sanctuary built on the martyrdom site and the columns the legend attaches to it: the settlement's religious history and its natural landmark trace back to the same rise of ground and the same story.