Beinette

The name comes from the Bagienni, the Ligurian tribe that lived here before the Romans, and it outlasted the Latin: shortly before 1000, in a donation to the bishop of Asti, a man signs himself Johannes habitator in loco Bagenne. In the middle of the eleventh century a diploma of Henry III still records the court of Baienna Superioris.

The town lies between the Brobbio and the Josina, and their floods shaped its life until the early twentieth century. In the Middle Ages, guarded by a castle, it had a pieve and a nunnery, Santo Stefano del lago. It changed hands over and over — bishops of Asti, Busca, Morozzo, Cuneo, Acaia — until in 1385 it became a free comune.