La Gorra is one of the rural nuclei that grew in the countryside of Carignano between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, and it belongs to a precise type: a seigneurial layout with defensive priorities. At the centre stands the castle or fortified house, with farm buildings pressed against it; all around runs a defensive ditch. The same scheme is found at Brillante and at la Ca', though the latter has yielded finds suggesting Roman origins.
What to see
The element that best explains how these settlements worked is the church. The churches serving the centres born in the countryside were still classed, until not long ago, as cappelline, with a resident priest; at la Gorra, as at Brillante, the chapel does not stand outside but inside, pressed against the castle. It was not a building of the village: it was a building of the house.
Visiting
La Gorra lies in the countryside north of the centre and is looked at from outside, since it is private property like almost all the fortified houses in the area. You reach it along the farm roads that cut across the plain towards the Po, and it is a route that makes sense by bicycle.
Our editors' tip
One hydraulic detail explains why la Gorra was born here: on the right bank the main canal, probably contemporary with the first walled town of Carmagnola, diverts the waters of the Meletta as far as the Stellone and feeds la Gorra and Tetti Faule. On this plain the position of a settlement was not decided by the road alone, it was decided by the water.