Alpette

Alpette sits on a terrace on the northern slopes of Cima Mares, above the Orco and Soana valleys. Its name is the diminutive of alp, in dialect a hut with high mountain pasture, and the coat of arms simply repeats it: an alpine landscape with three wooden byres in a row, a pine wood and the snowy Gran Paradiso chain behind. The village began as a settlement of shepherds, a fief of the counts of Valperga; the parish broke away from Pont Canavese in 1609, but self-government came only in 1773, after litigation that lasted centuries.

The parish church of Saints Peter and Paul was rebuilt in the nineteenth century over an eleventh-century one and keeps sixteenth-century frescoes attributed to Gaudenzio Ferrari and Fermo Stella da Caravaggio. Local craftsmen made their name as panel beaters in the Turin car factories; the trade is still taught at the copper school. The comune also has an astronomical observatory, the second in Piedmont after Pino Torinese's and now part of the University of Turin. In the nineteenth century Alpette drew summer visitors: the queens Elena and Margherita stayed at a spot still called Pian della Regina, as did Emilio Salgari.