Sessame lies in the Asti stretch of the Val Bormida, on a site probably settled before the Romans came, when the area was Ligurian. The name is traced to the Latin sex, six: the six Roman miles to Acqui, say most, or the six watercourses still crossing the territory, or the sixty miles to Turin. On the hill north-west stand the ruins of the Del Carretto castle, probably destroyed between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the arms recall it with a red castle above a green mount.
Beside the parish church of San Giorgio is the deconsecrated oratory of the Annunziata confraternity, which everyone here calls the chiesa dei Battuti: built in the seventeenth century, it keeps its apse, front and bell tower and now belongs to the comune. On a cone-shaped hill visible from every side, the Torrotto is a small two-storey tower, long the emblem of the village; it belonged to Giuseppe Saracco of Bistagno, prime minister in the early years of the twentieth century. Down the valley, on the left bank of the Bormida di Millesimo, a strip of land shelters one of the largest grey heron colonies in northern Italy, closed to visitors. Vines rule the rest: the Brachetto d'Acqui grape is traced back to Sessame, and until the nineteen-forties mulberries were grown for silkworms.
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📅 Every year, on 23 April
On 23 April Sessame, a municipality of 284 inhabitants in the province of Asti, celebrates its patron Saint George with holy mass and a solemn procession; on the first Sunday of May the Risotto Festival is held.
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