Cervatto

Cervatto lies high in the Val Mastallone, in Valsesia, and is the least populated municipality in the Vercelli province: some fifty people between the village and six hamlets scattered on the slopes. The name comes from the Cervo stream, and the coat of arms agrees, with a stag's head above a battlemented tower. For centuries it depended on Fobello, breaking away only in 1845; religious independence had come earlier, in 1738, when the bishop of Novara made the church of San Rocco a parish in its own right.

From the late nineteenth century the industrial families of Piedmont and Lombardy chose this hollow for their summers, and the name “Conca di Smeraldo”, the emerald basin, has stuck: the Borsalino villa was built by the architect Michele Frapolli, while Giuseppe Montaldo raised a castle-like villa with Germanic lines on a knoll above the houses. The carriage road up from Varallo owes much to Pietro Bayla, a textile manufacturer who gave five thousand lire for it. Puncetto, the Valsesian needle lace that once trimmed vestments and local dress, is still made here.