The hermitage of Belmonte, or hermitage of Busca, is a former monastery standing at 836 metres, on a rise at the foot of Monte Pagliano. In the thirteenth century there was a chapel here attached to a women's monastery: the nuns were Carthusians, in the fifteenth century the complex passed to the Dominicans, and in the seventeenth the Dominicans handed it to the Camaldolese, who renewed it and built a baroque church with stuccoes by Domenico Beltramelli and paintings by Dallamano.
What to see
The residential building is horseshoe-shaped and encloses, to the south-west, a garden with a monumental Atlas cedar. The main entrance opens on the north-east front, preceded by a stairway sheltered by a three-bay portico. Inside are numerous paintings; outstanding are some vaults by Francesco Gonin with allegorical subjects tied to the wars of independence, commissioned by Stanislao Grimaldi del Poggetto. Flanking the residential part are the old thirteenth-century church, deeply altered, and what remains of the baroque church, hit by bombing in the Second World War and now in ruins.
Visiting
You reach it from Busca by a small road of about five kilometres, or on foot along the paths that link the town centre and Monte Pagliano. It should be said that the hermitage is not generally open: it admits the public only on special occasions, for instance during the FAI spring open days, so it is worth checking before going up.
Our editors' tip
The hill has had a civil life as well as a religious one: at the beginning of the nineteenth century it served for the geodetic measurements directed by baron von Zach. After the suppression of the monastic orders and the Napoleonic period the property passed to local nobles and then to the Grimaldi, who turned the main building into a residence; after the war it came to the parish of Saints Peter and Paul in Carmagnola, which still uses it for its activities.