GTL - Grande Traversata delle Langhe - Stage 7A: San Benedetto Belbo

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Highlights and tour details

Deviation from the classic GTL route, which allows us to reach Murazzano, one of the most characteristic villages of the Upper Langa, between unique panoramas and sheep’s milk cheeses that carry the village’s name around the world.

San Benedetto Belbo is a magical timeless place, transported by the transience of human things (the lost castle, the dilapidated houses, the disappeared monastery) to the eternity of the greatest literature, from the shy and solitary genius of Italy’s greatest post-war writer. Not by chance the rare photos in which Beppe Fenoglio is smiling were almost all taken in San Benedetto, with him dressed in the festive clothes who moves on the square, like an actor on a stage. Because this is all San Benedetto is today: a stage tower in which the writer still and forever moves his characters that are all still there, in those roads and in those houses. Everything here speaks of Fenoglio and Fenoglio always spoke of San Benedetto.

Ideally closing the pages of Fenoglio’s books, you start walking again and, from the centre of the village, following the provincial road you reach Cascina Monastero, where you take the trail on the left in the direction of Lake Verne and, as soon as you go past the bridge, turn left again taking a dirt trail that takes to Cascina Maineri, going along a section of trail which leads to the municipality of Murazzano.

Murazzano, with the characteristic stone tower, is one of the largest and most fascinating villages of Upper Langa, rightly famous for the homonymous toma (a DOP cheese made of pure sheep’s milk) and for preserving the only windmill of the Langhe, converted from another watchtower, situated exiting from the centre after the lovely Shrine of Madonna di Hal, towards the cemetery. The village has a beautiful concentric, with two urban gates still standing and a remarkable parish church. Here, too, Fenoglio told plenty and no lover of the writer can leave the village without imagining to be that girl, Nella, character of the story “L’addio”, dragged away on the cart with the family of peasants who left the village “facendo appunto San Martino”, an expression in Piedmontese which means moving house, because on 10 November, close to the days of San Martino the farming contracts closed and the families of peasants often moved on to look for fortune elsewhere.

Attractions

San Benedetto Belbo : Urban Walls , Benedectine Monastery. Murazzano : Tower of Murazzano , City Gates, Tovegni Palace.

Other information

Source: Unione Montana Alta Langa
Itinerary code: GTL
Recommended period: Apr - Nov
Access by public transport: Yes
Classification: Medium and low mountain provincial
Provinces crossed: Langhe Monferrato e Roero