Mongiardino Ligure

Mongiardino Ligure is a comune sparso, and the label says most of it: there is no settlement actually called Mongiardino, the town hall sits in the hamlet of Lago Patrono, and the other hamlets are scattered between the Sisola and Gordenella valleys, with Salata ending up in the Vobbia valley. Piedmontese by province, the place looks towards Genoa: it is the only comune of the Borbera valley under the Genoese archdiocese, apart from Casalbusone, which belongs to the diocese of Tortona. The word Ligure was added to the name in 1863.

The bond is an old one: Mongiardino belonged to the imperial fiefs, and at Vergagni stood a Spinola castle of the first half of the fourteenth century, of which some fifty metres of wall survive, skirted in their day by the old mule track, along with traces of bastions and a rainwater cistern with plastered walls and a barrel vault. The coat of arms lines up the same things: a battlemented castle with two towers for the imperial fief, the silver and red chequy taken from the Spinola arms and, in chief, the red cross on white of Genoa. In 1956 the comune lost Dova Superiore, Dova Inferiore and Guazzolo to Cabella Ligure.