Writer Maria Tarditi was born in Monesiglio in 1928 to a modest family and for 38 years taught elementary school in Pievetta, a hamlet of Priola. In the 1990s, after reaching a well-deserved retirement, she began to write, her first inspiration stemming from a need to “have her say” about the much-declaimed way of dressing in Susanna Agnelli’s book “Vestivamo alla marinara.”

Tarditi wanted to emphasize how the costumes of country people were instead:

“On the bricks of Monesiglio, we certainly did not dress like that…I wanted to tell people how we dressed'” Vestiamo Alla Vernaccia – Maria Tarditi.

We recommend that you take a book by Tarditi with you, for example just the one entitled “Vestiamo Alla poveraccia,” go near one of the many belvederes in the Langa (how about the one in La Morra? Or maybe near the big bench in Dogliani?) and as dusk falls, read a few pages to totally immerse yourself in the atmosphere of these places and breathe deeply what it means to be “People of the Langa.”

Born in Santo Stefano Belbo, Cesare Pavese spent most of his life in Turin but always maintained an intimate connection with the land of the Langa, evident in all his literary output. Cesare Pavese is probably one of the essential Piedmontese writers of the 20th century in Italian literature.

Like no other Piedmontese writer, he captures Langhe’s most profound and most authentic essence. From a simple childhood place, the Langhe and the peasant world become where Pavese sees an irretrievable original past and seeks to recover it through writing. The hills are the writer’s childhood, the way through which to interpret reality, and how to measure the distance between what one was and what one has become.

We recommend reading The Moon and the Bonfires, written in 1949 and published in 1950, a few months before the writer’s suicide, following in his footsteps from Alba to Santo Stefano Belbo, where the writer combines his childhood memories, the reasons for anti-fascism and the poetics of myth elaborated during those years.

An itinerary to discover this part of Piedmont, right in the footsteps of the great writer, perhaps sipping a glass of Moscato, typical of this territory.

“Now, the road goes up in the middle of the valley. Wind, yes, but it makes it appèna to dishevel me. I can’t make out where the sky sticks to the hill. These are beginning to be the Langhe of my heart: the ones from Ceva to Santo Stefano Belbo, between the Tanaro and the Bormida, hiding and feeding five thousand partisans and offering them unique places to battle.”

Beppe Fenoglio was born in Alba on February 1, 1922, living and studying there. Fenoglio chooses, with the outbreak of the war, the path of the hills, towards the Alta Langa, to join one of the partisan bands that were formed at that time.

While for Pavese, the Langhe is the place of memory, nostalgia, and return to childhood, for Fenoglio, detachment does not happen, even when he is far away. It is the Langhe, the protagonists of peasant misery, described in Malora and short stories, and the Langhe of resistance, described in La paga del Sabato and Il partigiano Johnny.

For Beppe Fenoglio, the landscape of the Langhe is a living presence, accompanying the vicissitudes of the protagonists of his stories, even in the weather.

We recommend setting out to discover Fenoglio’s glimpses from Alba, where we find the house where he was born and where the settings of his many tales of partisan life can be admired. In addition, on the occasion of the Fenoglian centenary, Alba is dedicating a series of events to its famous son, and the Beppe Fenoglio Study Center offers five itineraries on the writer’s places. From the hills of Treiso and Mango to the glimpses of the Alta Langa, Murazzano, Feisoglio, and San Benedetto Belbo…

Guido Gozzano (1883-1916) Italian poet and writer. Born in Turin in 1883 to an upper-middle-class family, the young Guido devoted himself early to poetic activity. He lived most of his life in Piedmont. An ironic and melancholy style characterizes his work, often inspired by nature and daily life in the Piedmont countryside.

Among the themes essential to Gozzano’s poetic world is the image of his hometown, that beloved Turin to which he constantly returned.

Famous is the poem “Le Golose,” where Gozzano tells us about the historic cafes of Turin and the women as they choose and eat sweets in one of these elegant cafes, then as now, actual “salons of the city.”

The greedy ones
I am in love with all the ladies
Who eats the pastries in the confectioneries?

Ladies and young ladies –
the gloveless fingers –
they choose the pie. How much
they return, little girls!…

Of course, I recommend you take a trip to Turin, to one of the historic pastry shops, and taste the bicerin, gianduiotti and the tiny “bignole” full of flavor

Gianni Rodari was born in 1920 in Omegna, in the lesser-known and “named” province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in Piedmont.

Beginning in the 1950s, he also began publishing his works for children. His books have had countless translations and have merited several awards, including, in 1970, the prestigious “Hans Christian Andersen” prize, considered the “Nobel” of children’s literature.

A curiosity: poems by Gianni Rodari can be read on the walls of the small village of Roddi.

Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919 to a Jewish family of Piedmontese intellectuals. A chemistry graduate and chemist by profession, he became a writer after the traumatic experience of deportation to the Monowitz labor camp, which was part of the same complex as the better-known Auschwitz.

The horrific experience of his imprisonment is recounted in one of his most famous works: the novel-testimony, “If This is a Man,” published in 1947. Primo Levi’s great sense of humanity, moral highness, and full dignity shine through in the book.

Even today, the work is considered an imperishable document of Nazi violence, written by a man of crystal-evident character.

Fun fact: Primo Levi had Cesare Pavese as his Italian professor in ninth grade for a few months.

Essayist and writer Umberto Eco were born in Alexandria on Jan. 5, 1932. He attended high school and university in Turin, where he graduated in medieval philosophy at age 22 with a thesis on aesthetics in St. Thomas Aquinas.

He became world famous in the 1980s The Name of the Rose, a novel set in the Middle Ages that combines a detective story plot with philosophical and political issues.

Fragments of Umberto Eco’s Nicene childhood would later be immortalized, with names and details changed in another of his most famous novels, Foucault’s Pendulum.

“It was still the little village Belbo had known during the war. (..) The village appeared suddenly, after a turn, at the foot of a hill, where Belbo’s house stood. The hill was low and allowed a glimpse behind the Monferrato expanse, covered by a light luminous mist. As we climbed, Belbo showed us a small hill in front, almost hollow, and on the summit, a chapel flanked by two pine trees: Il Bricco. He said. Then he added: It’s okay if it doesn’t tell you anything. One used to go there for Angel’s Snack on Easter Monday. Now by car, you can get there in five minutes, but back then, you went there in a kind of pilgrimage.”

Today the hill of Bricco Cremosina lies within the core zone of the UNESCO site of Monferrato. An area less decorated than the Langhe but undoubtedly worth a visit.

Alessandro Baricco is one of the best-known and most beloved writers of fiction readers in Italy. He was born in Turin on January 25, 1958.

He was educated in the Piedmontese capital, graduating in Philosophy with a thesis on Aesthetics. He simultaneously studied at the conservatory, where he graduated in piano.

His love of music and literature inspired his work as a brilliant essayist and storyteller.

Fun fact: Alessandro Baricco first intervened among the literati when Collisioni, the well-known music festival, was born in 2009 in Novello and then moved to Barolo.

“Hollywood wine has also established itself in the world for the obvious reason that it is American-made. You can come up with all the refined reasons you want, but in the end, if you want to understand why today in Yemen they drink Hollywood wine. In South Africa they make Hollywood wine and even in the Langhe they do, the simplest answer is: because American culture is the culture of empire. And empire is everywhere, even in the Langhe.” – Alessandro Baricco