Caprile

Caprile holds a piece of the Biellese mountains that does not come in one piece: part of it is an exclave, cut off from the rest, rising to the summit of Monte Barone at 2,044 metres, on the border with Coggiola. The houses are spread over a handful of hamlets, and the town hall stands in the one called Chiesa. The name comes from the Latin caprile, a goat shelter; the shield says nothing about goats and carries three hazelnuts on a field parted per bend, blue and red.

For a long time Caprile was a dependency of Crevacuore, lived in seasonally by shepherds; the parish of San Carlo Borromeo was set up in 1629 and the break as a municipality of its own came in 1736. Below the Alpe di Noveis opens the Tassere cave, cut in dolomitic limestone and named after its badgers: past a shaft is a chamber where a tongue of rock two or three metres long, brushed with the knuckles, vibrates and holds a high note.