In Monferrato, beneath the houses, lie the infernot: underground rooms dug by hand into pietra da cantoni, with no light and no ventilation, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2014. This loop of some seventy kilometres starts at Cocconato, passes through Moncalvo — the smallest city in Italy — and drops down among the hill villages where the infernot can still be visited, closing at Vignale. Along the way: the abbey where Aleramo is buried, a Sacred Mount with twenty-three chapels, the white truffle fairs and the hills of Barbera and Grignolino.
The village sits at four hundred metres, at the north-western edge of the Asti Monferrato, and is known as the Riviera of Monferrato for the mild microclimate that lets olive trees and palms grow at this latitude. The town hall dates from the fifteenth century, Lombard Gothic, with a colonnaded loggia: a rare Piedmontese example of a civic building in this style, closer to the Lombard broletti than to Savoy architecture. Cocconato holds the Touring Club's orange flag. On clear days, from the terrace above the village, the Alpine arc is visible from Monviso to Monte Rosa. The surrounding hills produce Barbera d'Asti, Freisa and Monferrato DOC.
Just over three thousand inhabitants and the title of city: Moncalvo is the smallest in Italy. From the square of the Antico Castello, where the remains of the fortification still stand, the eye covers the whole of lower Monferrato. The Gothic church of San Francesco holds the mature works of Guglielmo Caccia, born at Montabone in 1568 but known to history as il Moncalvo, the leading painter of the Piedmontese Counter-Reformation; the adjoining parish museum also displays canvases by his daughter Orsola Maddalena Caccia, a nun and a painter. Twice a year the town changes pace: on the last two Sundays of October for the National White Truffle Fair, second in Piedmont only to Alba's, and in December for the Fat Ox Fair, with Piedmontese cattle on show and bollito misto in the trattorias.
Five kilometres east of Moncalvo, on the hilltop, stands the abbey founded by Aleramo before 961, the year the marquis granted it some land. Originally dedicated to the Saviour, it was later named after Saints Victor and Corona and entrusted to the Benedictines. In the second chapel on the right, that of the Madonna of the Rosary, Aleramo is buried: founder of the line of the marquises of Monferrato, his remains were moved inside the church in 1581, and beside the tomb survives a fragment of black and white mosaic floor from the first half of the twelfth century. On the wall, a fresco attributed to il Moncalvo portrays the marquis at prayer — the same painter as the previous stage. The village added to its name that of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was born here in 1871 and is buried here in a mausoleum.
The Sacred Mount of Crea has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2003, together with the other Sacred Mounts of Piedmont and Lombardy. The complex took shape between 1589 and 1612 around the sanctuary of Santa Maria Assunta and counts twenty-three chapels and five hermitages, set along a path that climbs through the woods. The chapel of the Coronation of the Virgin, the twenty-third, known as Paradise, dates from 1598 and is the highest: inside and on the vault some three hundred figures can be counted, in statues and frescoes. Within the sanctuary, the chapel of Saint Margaret is entirely frescoed in the later fifteenth century. Since 1997 the area has been a nature reserve: oak and chestnut woods, and the Crea fissure, a cleft in the rock of geological interest.
From here on begins the area recognised by UNESCO as the Monferrato of the Infernot, nine municipalities among the hills of the Casale district. Ottiglio is perched on a spur: at the top, the church of San Germano, built from 1761 in brick and tufa and decorated inside with a cycle of frescoes, occupies the most panoramic point in the village; just above it stands the castle, remodelled in the eighteenth century. The Carlini infernot, dug beneath a house in the old centre, is among the most visited in the area. The hamlet of Moleto, a kilometre further on, is a handful of stone houses along narrow lanes, with a view that fills its summer evening concerts.
This is the village where pietra da cantoni is easiest to read: on the façades, on the doorways, in the retaining walls of the vineyards. It is a marly limestone sandstone formed from marine sediments some twenty million years ago, soft to cut and able to harden in the air — the reason the infernot exist here, and only here. They are blind rooms, without ventilation, hollowed out by hand beneath the houses: temperature and humidity stay constant all year and the family bottles age without swings. They are not production cellars but private stores, which is why dozens were dug, one per house. The Ecomuseum of Pietra da Cantoni occupies Palazzo Volta, a sixteenth-century complex with a loggia, and preserves an infernot open to visitors. At the end of the village stands the Romanesque church of San Quirico. Cella Monte is one of the Most Beautiful Villages in Italy.
The loop closes at Vignale, in the middle of the vineyards. Palazzo Callori, seat of the counts of Vignale, has medieval foundations and outer walls of pietra da cantoni; today it houses the Regional Wine Cellar of Monferrato, and in its basement it keeps one of the best-known infernot in the UNESCO area. The local wine is Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese, pale red, tannic and with few years of ageing ahead of it, which in the glass surprises anyone expecting something light; alongside it, Barbera del Monferrato. On 22 June 2014 these wine landscapes, together with Langhe and Roero, became the fiftieth Italian site inscribed on the UNESCO list.
The roads are narrow provincial ones that climb and drop from one hill to the next: a car is all but essential, since bus links between the villages are sparse and do not run on Sundays. By bicycle the loop is fine but demanding, with short, steep gradients and no flat stretches. The one thing to plan is the infernot: nearly all are private or municipal and can be visited only by booking, through the local tourist offices or the Ecomuseum at Cella Monte, with few open days during the year. April and May bring green hills and long daylight; September is the vintage; October and November bring truffles, the autumn colour of the vines and the fairs. August is quiet, but several wineries close for the holidays.
The farm stays of Monferrato are hillside farmhouses among the vines, often with their own cellar: Barbera, Grignolino, Freisa, and Ruché in the villages just south of Moncalvo. Many estates have their own infernot beneath the house and show it to guests along with the cellar. At table come agnolotti al plin, veal with tuna sauce, bagna cauda from October onwards, boiled meats in the months of the Fat Ox Fair, robiola cheeses and krumiri biscuits. They also make convenient bases for going beyond the loop: Asti is twenty-five kilometres away, Casale Monferrato fifteen, and Asti station reaches Turin in half an hour.
