Balme is the highest comune of the Val d'Ala, the middle one of the three valleys that meet at Lanzo Torinese. The name comes from the Celtic balma, a shelter under rock, and shelters are everywhere here: the one shielding the lower village, church and town hall, from avalanches is called La Bàrma. Its arms carry the Franco-Provençal form Barmes and set the Trinity's radiant triangle above the silver peak of the Bessanese.
Until the seventeenth century Balme was a hamlet of Ala di Stura; independence came in 1610 through Giovanni Castagneri, a businessman who had built the fortified Routchàs house up the valley. Smuggling over passes at three thousand metres turned its men into guides for the first climbers. In 1896 Adolfo Kind first used skis in Italy between the village and Pian della Mussa, the upland that in 1927 gave Toni Ortelli his song La Montanara; since 1922 its water has supplied part of Turin.
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📅 Every year, on the first Sunday after Pentecost
On the first Sunday after Pentecost Balme, a municipality of 95 inhabitants in the province of Turin, celebrates its patroness the Santissima Trinità.
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.
