A Quick Tour Of Italy - Small Town Piedmont

If you are looking for a European tourist destination, consider the Piedmont region of northern Italy. You can get classic Italian food, and wash it down with fine local wine. Some parts of Piedmont haven’t yet been discovered by tourists. This short article presents Piedmont outside the capital Turin. A companion article presents Turin.

Piedmont means foot of the mountains, and that describes the area perfectly. A large part of the region is surrounded by hills and by mountains such as the Alps. The Piedmont climate is continental especially in the plains.

Stupinigi is a small village southwest of Turin in central Piedmont. Be sure to see the Hunting Lodge and its Museum of Art and Decoration.

The sunny Alpine valley ski resort of Bardonecchia near the French border hosted some events during the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and includes snowboarding and ski trails for all skill levels. The nearby village of Sestriere was a main venue during the 2006 Winter Olympic Games and the 2006 Winter Paralympics. The resort offers night skiing and, during the summer, Europe’s highest altitude eighteen hole golf course.

Alba contains a cathedral and several churches worth seeing and a great Municipal Museum of Archaeology and Natural Science. But most people go to Alba for the wine and the white truffles. Both Barolo and Barbaresco wines are produced within a few kilometers of the city.

Asti has often competed with its neighbor, Alba. Both produce white truffles. And they are both important wine producers. Asti Spumante, now called Asti, was probably the best-known Italian sparkling wine. Every September Asti celebrates its victory in a Middle Ages battle against Alba in a bareback horse race preceded by a medieval pageant. You’ll also want to see the city’s remaining towers, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta (Saint Mary of Assunte Cathedral), and the Gothic San Secondo Church.

In 1986 in the Piedmont city of Barolo Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food association to protest against the opening of a MacDonald’s in Rome. Within twenty years Slow Food has grown to 80,000 members in 100 countries. See our companion article I Love Touring Italy – Small Town Piedmont for a sample menu and more information on Piedmont wines as well as an in-depth examination of the area’s tourist attractions. Piedmont is the region of Italy with the most wines in each of the two top classifications.