Novalesa

Novalesa grew as a street village along the Via Maestra, a stretch of the old road of France that until the nineteenth century led to the Colle del Moncenisio: its inns were the staging post below the pass. In the meadows before the houses stands the Benedictine abbey founded in 726, with stone-slab roofs and a stone bell tower.

The Casa degli affreschi was one of those inns: on its front the arms of the European regions its guests came from and were bound for, inside the writings they left, one by a Polish pilgrim. Near the abbey a burial came to light, a man with a shell, probably a pilgrim back from Santiago.