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About Piedmont.
The Region stretches on the buttress of a great Alpine arc: Maritime, Cotian, Graian, Pennine Alps and a little part of the Lepontine Alps. It includes two large hilly areas, the Langhe and the Monferrato. The Po river has its source in Piedmont. The region is crossed by several Alpine streams flowing into the Po. Many Alpine lakes, with those of the morainic area of the Canavese, dot the region. In the eastern part, we find two bigger lakes: Lago Maggiore and Lago d'Orta. The regional capital is Turin. Other important cities are: Asti, Alessandria, Cuneo, Novara, Vercelli, Biella and Verbania.
This is a food lover's paradise, so we guess that means there's something here for everyone! Occupying a large area that borders on France and Switzerland, Piedmont is the ancient dominion of the Savoys, the ill-fated royal family who ruled Italy from the Unification in 1870 until abdication in 1946. But Piedmont is a world unto itself. Perhaps it was the thick fogs that often shroud its world-class vineyards - even giving their name, nebbiolo, to the region's premier grape - that cut it off from the rest of the peninsula. Certainly we can say that of the Alps, which loom so magnificently on the eastern and northern borders. Add to that the region's hopelessly picturesque lakes and hills (of which there are far more per square mile than in Tuscany), and you get a people who long ago learned to rely on their own small community for everything.
It has only been since the 1970s that even the rest of Italy has discovered the beauties and the bounties of Piedmont. Now it is a mecca for gourmands from every corner of the universe. They come to sip its wines, nibble on its cheeses, savor its stupendous meat dishes (in a country where fresh meat is rarely a mainstay), and last but far from least, they come to pay whatever price they must to taste its truffles. In the autumn, every small town in the region has a truffle, wild mushroom and/or wine festival, and here you will see the happy travelers devouring free samples, mingling in the piazza with the sweet and friendly but often rather bewildered locals, who are flattered but still not quite accustomed to all the attention. Many people arrive to spend a few romantic days on Lake Maggiore or teensy Lake Orta. In Italy.
Museums.
In Turin the visitors should not miss a visit to the Royal Armory, one of the richest in Europe; the Egyptian Museum, the second most important in the world after the one in Cairo, with the precious remains of the ancient civilization, which built the Pyramids. The Sabauda Gallery houses pictorial works of the Piedmontese, Dutch and Flemish schools, as well as some valuable works of the great Tuscans, such as the Beato Angelico and the Pollaiolo. In Vercelli the Borgogna Museum, which houses the works of the local Renaissance painters; in Alessandria the Civic Museum and the Pinacoteca deserve a visit. Asti’s art-gallery houses both fifteenth-century and eighteenth-nineteenth century paintings. Cuneo's Civic Museum is especially reserved to the local history and artistic tradition. In Novara an interesting Epigraphic Museum can be seen in the fifteenth-century cloister of the Cathedral. The Italian Government Tourist Board.
Piedmont Guide.
A land of great excursions in search of nature, culture, art and history, Piedmont offers a thousand reasons to those wishing to get to know it better. Most certainly special, this area features aristocratically noble traits visible also on the landscape. Dominated by impressive soaring peaks, for more than a century this region has attracted skiers, indeed in the late 19th century the first "pioneers" were performing their manoeuvres on rudimental "woods" at Sauze d'Oulx and Bardonecchia. Today, Piedmont's snow and mountains provide spectacular settings for both winter tourism and traditional summer holidays. Thanks to the unusual conformation of the Piedmontese valleys, may of the resorts are like balconies overlooking moutain peaks of agonising beauty - Monviso, Gran Paradiso, Monte Rosa, Argentera - a quality that has been acknowledged as Piedmont will be staging the 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Piedmont's moutains, however, are not given over entirely to skiing. Foresight and a great love of nature have led to the creation and safeguarding of nature parks and protected areas that offer silent spots and uncontaminated nature for walks, trekking and horse-riding. There are beautiful hilly landscapes, where Piedmont's noble past is visible in the castles, sanctuaries, abbeys and country churches - and also expressed in vineyards that have, for centuries, created a harmonious geometry and produced many aristocratic wines of great prestige. Travel Plan
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