Valli del Monviso
VALLI DEL MONVISOIn the valleys of Po, Bronda and Infernotto past and present, reality and legend are entwined.
Here nature, history, art and architecture meet and merge. The territory does not need much of a presentation.
Just mentioning the Po Valley is enough to immediately evoke the images that have become symbolic landmarks in the collective mind. Italy’s longest river, the Po, springs right here at the foot of the great Monviso, Vizou for the people of the upper Po Valley, a presence that constantly restricted their visual horizon and in many cases their entire life.
Along the Po Valley testimony of an ancient and glorious past can be found: petroglyphs, monasteries, abbeys but also simple rural chapels that are not renowned for their artistic and architectural quality but for the devotion that the local population expressed here in the past. Gastronomy and cultivation of wine with their genuine and characteristic uniqueness, as well as a strong tradition of the craft of woodworking are further such proofs.
The Bronda Valley with its three municipalities Castellar, Pagno and Brondello, imbedded between the valleys of Po and Varaita not far from Saluzzo, is considered the capital of ecologically compatible agriculture.
In the last decades first the integrated and then the biological cultivation have asserted themselves.
The apples of the Bronda Valley are highly praised. On the same hills the cultivation of Pelaverga wine, made of the grape of the same name, was recently revived and bears the controlled designation of origin D.O.C. Colline Saluzzesi.
Last but not least the Infernotto Valley is famous for the quarrying of stone, with the gneiss also known as “Stone of Luserna” and the quartzite used in construction.
Both are processed in the meanwhile on an industrial level however still with traditional methods.