In Carmagnola the pepper is serious business: the national fair at summer's end, among Piedmont's biggest festivals, has celebrated for over seventy years the four local types — square, long, spinning-top and tumaticot — that the Po plain's farmers made famous across Italy. Before the pepper, hemp made the town rich, its ropes and canvas supplying the navies.
The historic centre, with porticoes and Baroque churches, recalls the marquisate contested between France and Savoy. Turin is half an hour away: here, though, the calendar is still set by the vegetable garden.
Near Carmagnola
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
