A stone's throw from the sea

the other riviera
The Bormida di Màllare
and Bormida di Pàllare Valleys
A world of beech trees
The two valleys of the minor Bormida rivers –
the Bormida di Màllare and Bormida di Pàllare
– remind us of how Italy and Europe must have
looked until the Middle Ages: a succession of
majestic forests, where gigantic beech trees gave
way to chestnuts and willows and alders grew
along the banks of little lakes. The forests were
inhabited by wild boar, roe deer and hawks and
dotted with farming villages, offering hospitality,
food and rest to travellers and pilgrims.
Today most of the travellers arrive
by car, but the
forests,
hospitality, food
and rest remain
the same.
BORMIDA
Up where the river
is born
22
Logically enough, several of the
numerous sources of the River
Bormida are located in the
municipality of Bormida. It is said to
be the greenest in Italy, with almost
500 inhabitants in an area of wooded
hills crisscrossed by paths and mountain
streams, populated by wild animals and
boasting extensive panoramic ridges,
typical of the entire valley. Cascina
Piagna, above Pian Soprano is a wildlife
centre with an environmental education
workshop. The ridge facing Osiglia houses
a modern wind farm, where the sails
of a gigantic twenty-first-century
windmill turn in the air, in the best
Don Quixote tradition.
History has left
its mark
Leaving behind red Palazzo della Ferriera in
Pian Soprano, where the iron imported from
Elba was once worked, visitors encounter the
Napoleonic trenches on Mount Ronco di Maglio
and the Strada della Regina (Queen’s Road).
Its name commemorates Margarita Teresa, the
daughter of Philip IV of Spain, who passed
through here on the occasion of her marriage
to the Austrian Emperor Leopold I in 1666.