Rocca de’ Baldi, “a place suspended in time” pervaded by silences and archaic noises, and a life that is barely perceivable: a handful of houses, stretches of cobbled colonnaded streets, the castle, the tower, the square, the church, a brotherhood, the abbey and precious country chapels.

Built as a defensive structure by Philip I of Acaja between 1324 and 1332, it was then transformed by the House of Savoy into a noble residence. The town library is now housed in its sixteenth-century arcades. The guided tours offered by the Tourist Office, located right inside the courtyard of the manor, are not to be missed.

Four hundred earthen columns, each topped by a boulder, rise on the southern slope of the lower Val Maira. They are the “Ciciu” del Villar (puppets in the local dialect), natural formations of great geological and landscape interest.