The Ponte Vecchio of Dronero, which everyone calls the Devil's Bridge, was built in 1428 over the Maira torrent to ease access to the town and the valley for those arriving from the plain of Cuneo. It is a battlemented bridge with large unequal arches, and it has become the image by which Dronero presents itself: it turns up in photo features and on television as the symbol of the town.
What to see
The main arch has a span of about 27 metres and a width of about 6, and from eighteen metres above the water it also strides over two large irrigation canals, the Comella and the Presidenta. The merlons are Ghibelline, swallow-tailed, and run the whole length of the parapet: they are not, however, the bridge's original appearance but a nineteenth-century restoration. On the pillar of the smaller arch, on the town side, rested a drawbridge; the iron hinge it turned on was found under the road surface. The drawbridge was done away with in 1810, when the entrance passage was widened and the merlons remade.
Visiting
The communal archive of Dronero keeps a document worth a visit of its own: the original parchment of the receipt for seven hundred florins issued by a certain magister Antonius, who signs himself magister pontis lapidum Dranerii, master of the stone bridge of Dronero. The receipt was handed to Bernardo de Butinonis and Domenico Poynta, sindaci of the community of Dronero, for the construction and the works connected with it. It is rare to have the name of the builder of a medieval bridge, and rarer still to have proof that he was paid.
Our editors' tip
The name is the one that falls to many medieval bridges: when a structure looked too bold for human hands, it was put down to the Devil, usually in exchange for the first soul to cross it. At Dronero the legend circulates in several versions and none should be taken literally; what is real is the twenty-seven metre leap made with fifteenth-century technique. Look at it from below, from the bank of the Maira, and not only from above: from there you see the spring of the arch and the difference in size between the spans, which you cannot take in from the deck.