Castelletto Cervo

Castelletto Cervo sits on a rise wedged between the Cervo and its tributary the Ostola, above one of the few fords around: people still cross there to reach Mottalciata. The ford is why the castle exists, built on the crag beside the parish church of Saint Thomas Becket.

At Garella the priory of San Pietro survives, a Cluniac foundation of the eleventh century: its lands lay on the transhumance routes from the Valsesia to the Vercelli plain and kept it prosperous until the thirteenth century, then monastic life died out in the sixteenth. The coat of arms joins the Savoy cross, the marks of Cluny and the nine lozenges of the San Martino.