Elva lies high in the Valle Maira, under the Pelvo d'Elva, which rises above three thousand metres. In the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta, at the hamlet of Serre, the presbytery keeps a fresco cycle painted in two phases: the vault by an unknown late-Gothic hand, the walls by the Fleming Hans Clemer, who has been known ever since as the Master of Elva. They show stories of the Virgin and of Christ, dated to about 1493, ending in a Crucifixion that fills the whole end wall; tradition sees the painter's self-portrait in the face of Longinus.
Elva is best known, though, as the village of the caviè. Until the middle of the last century many of its people gathered women's hair and sold it in France and across Europe for wigmaking, the trade that gave the village the nickname it still carries.
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📅 Every year, on 12 May
On 12 May Elva, a municipality of 94 inhabitants in the province of Cuneo, celebrates its patron Saint Pancras; the painter Hans Clemer, the Master of Elva, was active in its territory.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Elva, but an easy day trip away.
