The name may come from crava, Piedmontese for goat, and the arms show a he-goat on a mountain; the better-credited reading traces it to the Calventius family, hence the early name Villa Calventiana. It appears in 1125 in the marquisate of Cortemilia that Bonifacio del Vasto left to a son.
Around 1190 the Del Carretto raised a castle guarding the Belbo and Bormida valleys: poor country, it lived off merchants bound from the Ligurian ports to the plain. Rebuilt from its foundations in the seventeenth century, it commands the hill, with the parish church of Saints Peter and Vitale against its walls. From 1955 it housed the farming school that produced the hazelnut growers.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Cravanzana
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Cravanzana, but an easy day trip away.