Spighe Verdi
Spighe Verdi in Piedmont
12 towns
Piedmont holds 12 Spighe Verdi sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Cuneo, Alessandria, and Asti provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Chiusa di Pesio, Acqui Terme, and Alba. 9 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Chiusa di Pesio
Province: Cuneo · 575 m
The valley mouth town at 575 meters where the Pesio leaves the mountains, founded around a Carthusian monastery donated in 1173.
Acqui Terme
Province: Alessandria · 156 m
A Roman spa town at 156 meters on the Bormida, where a sulphurous spring still surfaces at 74.5 degrees under an 1870 pavilion.
Alba
Province: Cuneo · 172 m
The Langhe capital at 172 meters on the Tanaro, world reference for white truffle and Nebbiolo, headquarters of Ferrero.
Canelli
Province: Asti · 157 m
The Asti Spumante town at 157 meters in the Belbo valley, where 20 kilometers of underground tuff cellars hold millions of bottles at constant temperature.
Guarene
Province: Cuneo · 360 m
A Roero hilltop village at 360 meters above the Tanaro, whose Roero family baroque castle is now a luxury hotel and contemporary art destination.
Bra
Province: Cuneo · 290 m
A Roero town at 290 meters where the world's first gastronomic university now teaches food systems.
Gavi
Province: Alessandria · 233 m
The Cortese di Gavi town below a Genoese star fortress, where Piemonte white wine was first recorded as Ligurian court tribute in 972.
Monforte d'Alba
Province: Cuneo · 480 m
A Barolo cru village at 480 meters where the Cathars were burned in 1028 and where the summer jazz festival fills the old piazza.
Santo Stefano Belbo
Province: Cuneo · 175 m
A Belbo valley village at 175 meters between the Langhe and Asti hills, birthplace of Cesare Pavese and the largest producer of Moscato d'Asti.
Cherasco
Province: Cuneo · 288 m
A walled grid-plan town on the river terrace where the Stura di Demonte meets the Tanaro, on the western edge of the Langhe.
Volpedo
Province: Alessandria · 182 m
A Colli Tortonesi village at 182 meters where the Divisionist painter Giuseppe Pellizza lived and died at thirty-eight in 1907.
Castiglione Falletto
Province: Cuneo · 350 m
A Barolo hilltop commune in the Langhe, ringed by vineyards on both sides of its ridge.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.