Hidden Piedmont: Villages Beyond the Langhe and Turin

When people talk about Piedmont, their minds go straight to Turin, to the UNESCO hills of the Langhe and to the queues outside the wineries of Barolo. But you only need to shift your gaze a few kilometres to find hidden villages of Piedmont that stay empty even in August: Alpine valleys where Occitan is still spoken, Romanesque abbeys lost among the vineyards of the Monferrato, sacred mountains that climb through the woods without a single tour group. This guide gathers the stops we use to build a different journey through Piedmont, ordered by area, with a concrete reason to stop in each one.

The Occitan valleys

We begin in the west, the Occitan valleys of the province of Cuneo. Here the langue d'oc of the troubadours survives in tiny villages like Ostana and Elva, in the Val Maira and the Valle Po, where the houses of stone and lose (stone slabs) look towards Monviso and in winter empty out almost entirely. It's the same culture that runs through the "Percorso Occitano", a 177-km trek over fourteen stages in the Val Maira: you sleep in family-run stopover lodgings and walk for hours without meeting anyone. Further south, where the Ligurian Alps fade into the Langhe, there is Garessio, a spa village of the Val Tanaro surrounded by chestnut woods: mineral waters known for centuries and a medieval centre that mass spa tourism has forgotten.

The Valsesia and the sacred mountains

We then climb north, into the Valsesia, the valley that carves the Piedmont side of Monte Rosa. At Alagna the Walser community, arrived from the Valais in the Middle Ages, left the extraordinary timber houses of the hamlet of Pedemonte, with the balconies for drying rye still in place. From there you set off for the Tailly Lakes and the Val d'Otro, an amphitheatre of pastures and mirrors of water that stays wild precisely because you can only get there on foot. On the valley floor, above Varallo, is the Sacro Monte di Varallo: the oldest of the Alpine sacred mountains, over forty frescoed chapels peopled with life-size statues, and yet almost always peaceful compared with the more famous sanctuaries of the North.

The same goes for the Sacro Monte di Belmonte, a UNESCO site like the one at Varallo but far less visited, overlooking the Canavese: a devotional path through the woods with a view sweeping from the plain to the Alps. Towards the Val di Susa, the Sacra di San Michele deserves a detour too, the abbey that is the symbol of Piedmont, perched on Monte Pirchiriano: the Scalone dei Morti (Stairway of the Dead) and the Zodiac portal alone are worth the climb, and outside the high-season weekends it can be visited at leisure.

The Monferrato

Moving east you enter the Monferrato, land of cultivated hills and pietra da cantoni (local sandstone). Between Asti and the Turin hills hides the Abbey of Vezzolano, one of the masterpieces of Piedmontese Romanesque: a cloister, a carved rood screen and an atmosphere of absolute silence, a few minutes from roads that no one drives for tourism. In the Alto Monferrato, near Acqui Terme, the Pieve di San Pietro preserves an octagonal bell tower and a simplicity that says more than many grander churches. On the border between the Langa astigiana and the Monferrato there is then Mombaldone, a sandstone village perched above the Bormida, one of the most beautiful in the area and almost unknown to tourism. Anyone who loves more rural glimpses can add Cella Monte and Ozzano, villages of the infernot, the cellars carved into the pietra da cantoni and now a UNESCO site.

Turin, too, finally, has corners that slip past the museums-and-Mole circuit. The secret courtyards of the Quadrilatero Romano open up behind doors that people walk past without noticing, while the Borgo Medievale of the Valentino park is a nineteenth-century reconstruction overlooking the Po, free of charge and perfect for a slow stroll.

Practical tips

A few practical tips. The Occitan valleys and the Valsesia are at their best from May to October, when the trails are free of snow; the Monferrato and the Canavese can be visited all year round, but in autumn they add the grape harvest and the foliage. For the valleys you need a car, while the Sacra di San Michele, Vezzolano and the sacred mountains are reached with short detours from the main routes. Built this way, an itinerary through hidden Piedmont combines mountains, Romanesque and Occitan culture in just a few days, without ever standing in a queue.