Cartignano

Cartignano is the smallest independent town of the Maira valley: the stream of the same name splits it into two cores, Ponte and Paschero, joined by a narrow stone bridge, and its hamlets number fourteen. The name probably comes from a Roman family name, Quartinius or Cartinius, and the first documentary trace, a curia de Cartiniano, is placed in 1190.

Over that name scholars quarrelled. In the eighteenth century Jacopo Durandi identified Cartignano with the Forum Cerealis of Roman funerary inscriptions found in the valley — an old grain market — and cited charters of the abbey of Caramagna where the place appears as Cereanum, with a marginal note: nunc Cartignano, now Cartignano. Goffredo Casalis agreed; in the nineteenth century baron Giuseppe Manuel di San Giovanni, of Dronero, accused him of carelessness: no trace of those charters in the archives, and inscriptions that, if they ever existed, could be forgeries. The Berardi castle, on the right bank of the Maira, is the only one left in the valley: Cartignano was its one centre held by a feudal lord.