Luserna San Giovanni

Luserna San Giovanni lies in the Val Pellice, almost at the meeting of the Pellice, Luserna and Angrogna streams. The two names were two separate municipalities on the two banks of the Pellice: Luserna, from the eleventh century the seat of the lords of that name, and San Giovanni, where the Waldensians settled from the thirteenth century, making it an overwhelmingly Protestant village.

The official separation came in 1657, after the Piedmontese Easters; the reunion only on 11 June 1871, after 214 years, helped along by the working of the lamellar gneiss quarries, the famous Luserna stone. In 1967 Caffarel left Turin and brought its chocolate factory here.