Garessio

The territory of the village of Garessio (Garess in Piedmontese dialect, Garesce in the Ligurian one and Garéshe in the local dialect) is divided by the Alpine watershed between the Po valley and Liguria, the Colle San Bernardo (957m). T

he old town centre is divided into four hamlets (Ponte, Poggiolo, Maggiore and Valsorda). Other mountain districts are very interesting too and the intineraries towards them and towards the main alpine tops of the municipality (Galero, Mindino, Antoroto).

Beyond the Colle di Casotto rises the namesake castle which was a holiday and hunting resort of the Savoia family that was constructed on the location of a charterhouse of the XII century, one of the first of Italy. Unlike other municipalities of the valley, Garessio is provided with a rich historical Archive (among the most interesting pieces there is the fifteenth-century "Libro della Catena con gli Ordinati medioevali della Comunità garexina"), with a fine Civic Museum dedicated to Archeology and Earth science, with the civic art gallery "Colmo" and a Library rich in volumes and dedicated to comedy writer Camillo Federici. These four cultural institutions are inside the Library's building.

In 1990 the poet from Garessio Gian Paolo Canavese founded the Poetry Museum there, by collecting lyrics poems from all over the world, numbering more than 500 poets. In the hamlet of Valdinferno, named by Napoleon maybe after ancient peatbogs that burned there in the XVIII century, lived until the end of 2008, all year long, only one person, a survivor from the Russian front, Armando Sereno that who made a promise to the Madonna: if he had come back alive from war, he would have never left Valdinferno.