In the middle of the town stands a boulder fourteen metres high, carried here by the glaciers four hundred thousand years ago. Local people used to call it ël roch; a chapel dedicated to Saint Michael was built on top of it, and during the war a passage was dug inside as an air-raid shelter.
Since 1884 it has borne the name of the Turin geologist Gastaldi, who studied it closely. Pianezza has 14,169 residents at the mouth of the lower Susa valley; the twelfth-century pieve of San Pietro holds paintings by Giacomo Jaquerio, and the town hall occupies an art nouveau villa designed by Pietro Fenoglio in 1902.
The patron is the Madonna della Stella and the feast falls on 12 September. In the hamlet of San Pancrazio there is a sanctuary of 1640, built over a votive pillar raised for a miracle that tradition dates to 12 May 1450; the complex, with its pronaos and convent, was reworked in 1937 and again in 1956.
At the foot of Monte Musinè, visible from Pianezza, the battle of 312 between Constantine and Maxentius was in all likelihood fought: a few months before the far better known one at the Milvian Bridge. Villa Lascaris, which today hosts events, was built between 1811 and 1815 on the ruins of the old castle for the marquis Agostino Lascaris di Ventimiglia.
chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo · chiesa della Confraternita del Nome di Gesù · chiesa della Madonna della Stella and 3 more
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Nearest airport: Torino Caselle, 13 km away
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📅 Every year, on 12 September
On 12 September Pianezza celebrates the Madonna della Stella; on the third Sunday of September the town instead runs the Palio dij Semna-Sal, born from a popular legend.
chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo A parish church of 1727 by Giuseppe Castelli, with a triangular-plan bell tower and restored frescoes. 
chiesa della Confraternita del Nome di Gesù The church the Batù built for themselves in 1680, refusing the merger of Pianezza's two parishes. 
chiesa della Madonna della Stella A fifteenth-century church on a branch of the road to Santiago, with frescoes of the Jaquerio school. 
Villa Leumann An art nouveau villa restored by Pietro Fenoglio in 1885, with three slate domes: today the town hall. 
Museo della passamaneria "Vittorio Massia" Historic looms inside a passementerie factory that is still working, at Pianezza. Castello di Pianezza Only fragments of the castle remain in the garden of Villa Lascaris: here, in 1706, Maria Bricca passed throug 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.
Outside Pianezza, but an easy day trip away.
