Capital for four centuries of the marquisate of Monferrato, Casale keeps the air of a small court: the castle, the Romanesque cathedral with its one-of-a-kind atrium, frescoed palaces. The surprise waits up a courtyard staircase: the synagogue of 1595, among Europe's most sumptuous, its Baroque golds and Jewish museums telling of a centuries-old community.
On the Po, the town lives on rice and wine — Grignolino has its homeland here — and on krumiri, the moustache-shaped biscuits born in 1878. The UNESCO vineyard Monferrato begins just outside the gates.
Near Casale Monferrato
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
