Piedicavallo

Piedicavallo sits at the head of the Cervo valley, in the upper Biellese. The highest pastures of the side valleys are not the comune's: for centuries they have belonged to places lower down — Andorno Micca, Callabiana, Selve Marcone — whose herds came up on the transhumance. Two explanations circulate for the name: the last village you could reach on horseback, beyond which you went on foot, or Pe' d'cò d'val, at the foot of the mountain. In Walser Töitschu it is Pickuvoal.

It was summer pasture first, with settled inhabitants only from the fifteenth century. The territory broke away from Andorno Micca with the rest of the upper valley, and a second split gave it a council of its own on 14 March 1700; in the early twentieth century Rosazza left in turn. For generations the men spent much of the year on building sites at home and abroad, and came back with new ideas: hence the nursery, the school, the Regina Margherita theatre and the mutual aid society of 1872. In 1895 converts to Protestantism built the Waldensian church, which also held classrooms.