L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano I f you drive south and west out of Cuneo and climb into the V a l V a r a i t a , f o l - lowing the river up past the last farms until the valley narrows and the road seems to be heading straight i n t o t h e m o u n t a i n s , y o u eventually reach Chianale, sitting at the head of it all l i k e a f u l l s t o p . I t i s v e r y nearly the final scrap of Italy before the peaks hand you over to France: a hamlet of t h e m u n i c i p a l i t y o f P o n - t e c h i a n a l e , p e r c h e d a t around 5,900 feet, with the Colle dell'Agnello, one of the highest paved passes in the Alps at nearly 9,000 feet, just beyond it. Water is what gave the vil- l a g e i t s n a m e , f i t t i n g l y enough, since "Chianale," la Cianal in the local language, m e a n s m o r e o r l e s s " t h e canal," a nod to the Varaita torrent that comes rushing straight through the middle of town. The river actually splits Chianale in two, and the two halves are stitched back together by a lovely old s t o n e b r i d g e t h a t h a s become the village's calling card, the one on every post- card and picture. For somewhere this small and this remote, Chianale has a pretty impressive his- tory: contested through the Middle Ages, passing from T u r i n e s e b i s h o p s t o l o c a l lords, in 1343 it joined that m o s t d e l i g h t f u l o f A l p i n e oddities, the Republic of the Escartons, a little fed- eration that governed itself w i t h a f r e e d o m m o s t o f E u r o p e c o u l d o n l y e n v y r i g h t u p u n t i l t h e S a v o y s absorbed the area in 1713. There is another distinction, too: in the fraught sixteenth century Chianale was, for a time, the one place in the valley where religious free- dom was tolerated, a small pocket of open-mindedness in a closed-minded age. Most visitors come now simply for how it looks, and honestly, what you get well repays the drive. Chianale is k n o w n a s a " v i l l a g e o f stone," and it has earned its place among I Borghi più Belli d'Italia, the official roll call of Italy's most beautiful villages. Everything here is slate and timber: grey stone w a l l s , h e a v y s l a t e r o o f s , w o o d e n b e a m s , a n d b a l - c o n i e s t h a t e r u p t i n t h e warm months into a riot of flowers. Stop at the four- teenth-century church of Sant'Antonio by the foun- t a i n a n d a t t h e g r a n d e r church of San Lorenzo, built across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and if you have half an hour to spare, the little Museum of Costume and Textile Craftsmanship, housed in what was once the Capuchin Mission, is a real gem that k e e p s t h e m e m o r y o f t h e valley's clothes and crafts alive. M o r e t h a n a n y t h i n g , though, Chianale is deeply rooted in Occitan culture, i n f l u e n c e d b y a l a n g u a g e a n d h e r i t a g e t h a t e x t e n d a c r o s s p a r t s o f s o u t h e r n France, northwestern Italy, and the Pyrenees. Occitan is still spoken in this part of Piedmont, and its influence can be heard in the music and language, and seen in local traditions and festivals. It gives Chianale a character that feels distinct from much of the rest of Italy, with cul- tural ties that reach as natu- r a l l y t o w a r d P r o v e n c e a s toward Rome. W h e n i n C h i a n a l e , y o u should eat the way moun- t a i n s a t a l t i t u d e t e n d t o d e m a n d , w h i c h i s t o s a y , heartily and without apolo- gy. The dish to hunt down is les ravioles, plump little gnocchi of potato and cheese drowned in melted butter, the kind of food you need when you work hard in cold air and want to stay warm and full; there is also a rib- sticking polenta of potato and buckwheat, served hot and heavy with local cheese. One last thing, for the walk- e r s a m o n g o u r r e a d e r s : a r o u n d t h e v i l l a g e , y o u ' l l find the Bosco dell'Alevè, said to be the largest forest o f S w i s s s t o n e p i n e , t h e cembro, in all of Europe. A n d w h e n y o u f i n a l l y reach that stone bridge and stop to catch your breath, r e m e m b e r : y o u m a y h a v e arrived at the very end of I t a l y b u t o h ! T h e r e i s s o much beauty to enjoy. L ong before any- o n e t h o u g h t t o g r e a s e a p o l e , t h e r e w a s a d r e a m : i n t h e hungry centuries of the Mid- dle Ages, peasants across E u r o p e t o l d o n e a n o t h e r a b o u t a c o u n t r y c a l l e d Cuccagna, Cockaigne, in English, a paradise of plenty where the rivers ran with wine, the houses were built of cheese, roast pigs wan- dered about already carved, and the only thing punished by law was work. It was the poor man's heaven, a fantasy of never being hungry again, and it was far too good an idea to leave in the realm of stories. Italy eventually tried to build that fantasy, at least for a day. In early modern Naples, particularly during the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries, the idea of Cuccagna took spectacular physical form when, during public festivities, the author- ities erected mountains, cas- tles, and elaborate structures covered with bread, cheese, meat, and other provisions, sometimes with live animals incorporated into the dis- play. At a signal, the crowd surged forward to claim the food. Out of that spectacle came the game we still know, t h e a l b e r o d e l l a c u c c a g n a , t h e " t r e e o f plenty:"a tall pole smeared w i t h l a r d o r s o a p , i t s t o p heavy with hams, cheeses and other prizes, and below it, a scrum of climbers slid- ing back down as fast as they struggled up. It spread to every village festa in Italy, sometimes standing upright in the piazza, sometimes laid out horizontally over a river so the losers tumbled into the water. And it even crossed the ocean with the people who l o v e d i t . E v e r y M a y , i n Philadelphia, the greased pole rises again at the South 9 t h S t r e e t I t a l i a n M a r k e t Festival, a thirty-foot column slick with lard, its summit h u n g w i t h p r o v o l o n e a n d c a s h . T e a m s o f c l i m b e r s build themselves into human pyramids, the big men at the base, the small and stubborn a t t h e t o p , a n d h a u l o n e another upward exactly as their great-grandparents did in the old country. The land of plenty is still up there: you just have to climb for it! A medieval-style scene evokes the old dream of Cuccagna, an imaginary land of abundance where food was plentiful and work was forbidden (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) L ' A l b e r o d e l l a C u c c a g n a : t h e greased pole to paradise Chianale, the stone village where Italy ends Traditional stone houses in Chianale, a historic Alpine village in the Varaita Valley, in the province of Cuneo (Photo: Claudio Giovanni Colombo/Dreamstime) LIFE PEOPLE PLACES HERITAGE TRADITIONS

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