This itinerary, which involves 6 Municipalities, starts in “Alfieri Hills” area, with the villages of Cisterna d’Asti and Ferrere, enters the “Lands of Saints” with Villafranca d’Asti and San Paolo Solbrito, and reaches at the end the “Hills of Romanesque churches” nearby the towns of Maretto and Roatto, where intersects the route called “The Way of Saints”.

A curious name, “Via dei Briganti” (“The Way of Bandits”), that reminds episodes and popular legends, tooking the walker back in time, until the Middle Ages. In that time the plague of banditry began to spread in Piedmont, a conseguence of poverty that marked life of peasants deeply. A phenomenon already consolidated between the Seventeenth and the Nineteenth century, sometimes transforming itself into a real revolutionary action of a political nature.

Lands like these, populated more by wild “forests” than by men, became perfect places of action for the bandits. Vandals, both men and women, dreaded by authorities but not always despised by people, to whom they gave one third of the spoils.

However, woods were no sufficient to attract vandals; they needed roads, the less curvy routes, in the valleys, already used for trades in the Roman Time.

The villages of Ferrere and Villafranca were strategic places of transit in the Middle Ages: the first was also desirable for the presence of mines and iron workshops; the second became famous thanks to the country church of Musanza and its hospital for pilgrims, that also received merchants and high-ranking foreigners. 

Sentinels of the roads were here the villages of San Paolo and Solbrito, located nearby the intersection between the Via Fulvia, built in the Roman Time to link Tortona and Pollenzo crossing Asti, and the medieval Via de Plano, extended on the perimeter of the Pianalto Astigiano area, in the north-south direction.

Who chooses this route will be fascinated by the castle of Cisterna d’Asti, whose water tank, still visible in the courtyard, gives its name to the town.

Staying on the topic of castles, also Ferrere stands out; the seat of the local administration is the impressive medieval fortress that rises up isolated a little from the centre.

Moving to the table, the village “challenges the plate of cured meats” with the near town of Villafranca d’Asti: Cooked Salami, cheese and honey, paired with a good glass of Barbera d’Asti wine.

The way reaches Maretto and finishes in Roatto, among the vineyards of Freisa, with the Alps and Monviso peak in the background.