The Most Beautiful Little Village in the Alta Langa

Tuesday morning dawned clear as a bell.  We could see the Alps from our apartment.

The big mountain is Monte Viso, just on the Italian side of the border with France.

The town in the foreground is Novello... about 6 km as the crow flies from our apartment.

It was the perfect day to head out and explore.

Driving down the road toward Monchiero, Carol and Roger ran across a party of grape harvesters.

They were picking dolcetto grapes to make the wine of the same name.

They gave Carol a grappiolo (bunch of grapes) that she and Roger feasted on all day.




The Langa is a portion of the Piemonte that consists of steep hills and deep valleys, separated from the Mediterranean by the even higher Ligurian Hills.  As Carol and Roger drove through small town after small town this day, they saw wineries, industrial zones, nocciola orchards.  None of what they saw prepared them for this...

High on a ridge separating two valleys was the small village of Bossolasco, population 675.


Since the name Bossolasco translates roughly as "limp boxwood tree," they didn't expect much.


Imagine their surprise when they ran across this...

...a cobbled main street a few blocks long with rose bushes in front of every house.

Every house had flowers by the front door and window boxes beneath the windows.




The one hotel in town was appropriately named the Bellavista.  As you looked out from their terrazza, there was a breath-taking view of the valley below.

The ridge upon which the town was situated was very narrow, making the village one street wide.



Off that main street were steep paths down into the valley and arched rock walls holding up the buildings that lined the main street.

Tucked in a corner beneath a crook in the main street was the community rose garden...a melange of distinct perfumes.

All of this was very pretty but not what makes the town so beautiful.

Bossolasco has what the Italians call a beautiful "anima" or soul.


In the autumn of 1943, when the Mussolini government fell to the Allies, the German Army occupied northern Italy.  They very shortly started rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps in Eastern Europe.  They offered lucrative bounties to any Italians who turned over Jewish families to the authorities and execution by firing squad for any Italian found to be harboring Jewish fugitives.

Despite this, for more than a year, the people of Bossolasco hid and protected several Jewish families...strangers who had found their way to town.  The whole town remained mum, and the fugitives all survived.

Sixty-some years later, as a tribute to the people of Bossolasco, the sculptor Daniele Cozzato created this sculpture...the Angel of the Alta Langa.

It now sits on a promontory in the middle of the town of Bassolasco ...the most beautiful little village in the Alta Langa.