Piode takes its name from the word piova, the stone slabs — beola — used to roof houses and quarried nearby: the village is named after the material on top of its own roofs. It lies in the Valsesia, on the floor of the Sesia valley, and its territory climbs steeply to over two thousand metres in the uninhabited part.
No document survives of the first settlements: Piode is first mentioned in 1217, when it passed with other villages under the jurisdiction of the commune of Vercelli; from the mid fourteenth century it belonged to the Visconti of Milan, and stayed theirs until 1703, when the holdings went to the House of Savoy. The oratory of the Madonna delle Pietre Grosse was built where a landslide had come to rest, its bell tower cut from one of the fallen boulders; the parish church of Santo Stefano, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, keeps frescoes by Antonio Orgiazzi and three paintings by Pier Francesco Gianoli.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Piode
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Piode, but an easy day trip away.