Montirone

At Montirone there is an iron water wheel, the Noira, which has ended up on the town's coat of arms as well. It was built in the eighteenth century for one purpose only: to feed the three fountains in the park of Palazzo Lechi. The wheel turned in the Molinara canal, gathered water and poured it out at a higher level, from where it flowed down to the gardens. Today pumps do the work, but the wheel and its marble base are still in place.

That palace has seen some remarkable visitors. Faustino Lechi lodged Leopold Mozart there, travelling with his son Wolfgang Amadeus, and in 1805 the counts Lechi, who were generals in the French army, received Napoleon there for three days. The name of the village, on the other hand, does not speak of a real mountain: it comes from monterone, which meant a rise in the ground, and that rise may be the mound on which the tower of the Emilj was built in the fourteenth century.