Rittana takes in almost the whole of the short valley that bears its name, a left-bank tributary of the Stura di Demonte, with more than forty hamlets scattered over its slopes; at the top the valley closes with the 1796 metres of the Alpe di Rittana. One of those hamlets is Paraloup, Occitan for sheltered from the wolves, long little more than a summer pasture: the name appears as early as 1307, in two deeds signed by the notary Amedeus de Paralupo.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries some thirty people lived there all year, every one of them a Goletto, charged with supplying water to the land around. From September 1943 the huts of Paraloup housed the partisan band Italia libera, the first nucleus of the Giustizia e Libertà brigades: Duccio Galimberti, Dante Livio Bianco, Nuto Revelli and Giorgio Bocca all passed through. Abandoned in the Sixties, the hamlet was later restored as a place of memory. In 1987 the council had the house fronts of the village centre frescoed by contemporary artists, following an old local custom.
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📅 Every year, on 15 January (solemn feast on the first Sunday of May)
Rittana celebrates its patron Saint Maurus on 15 January, with a solemn feast on the first Sunday of May; since 1987 the house façades in the centre have been frescoed by contemporary artists.
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Outside Rittana, but an easy day trip away.
