Montaldo Scarampi

The name comes from loco Montealto, first recorded in a document of 984: it says where the village stands, high on the hills left of the Tiglione. The second half came much later, from the Scarampi bankers of Asti, who held the fief from the fourteenth century and were marquises here in the seventeenth; the town arms repeat their blazon in chief, five red pales on gold.

The parish church of the Santissima Annunziata is medieval in origin, but little of that building survives: destroyed in 1636 in acts of war, it was rebuilt from scratch soon afterwards. The bell tower on its flank, with two clock faces and the bell chamber above, is twentieth-century.