Explore Piemonte and Valle d’Aosta
The main route to France from Turin runs through the Susa Valley, passing near the region’s main ski resorts. The one real sight to spot is the Sacra di San Michele, a forbidding fortified abbey anchored atop a rocky hill; it’s an easy day-trip from Turin. Susa itself, reached by a minor branch of the rail line, was once a modest Roman town and is now a modest provincial town – a pleasant stopover but with little else to lure you.
Taking the parallel Chisone Valley to the south back towards Turin, you will encounter a much more bucolic and less-developed area, dotted along the way with small towns. The picturesque slate-roofed hamlet of USSEAUX, whose weather-worn old walls are decorated with colourful murals, is well worth discovering and makes an agreeable spot for lunch.
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Sacra di San Michele
Sacra di San Michele
One of the closest towns to the Sacra di San Michele is SANT’AMBROGIO, a small town at the foot of San Michele’s hill. It’s thirty minutes by train from Turin and connected with the abbey by a very steep ninety-minute hike; with your own car, however, you can drive up to the abbey from the town of AVIGLIANA. The walk is worth it, both for the views and for the opportunity to soak up the eerie atmosphere. Climbing up to the abbey and hewn into the rock, a long flight of stairs – the Scalone dei Morti (Stairs of the Dead) – sets a morbid tone, for it was here that the skeletons of the monks used to be laid out for local peasants to come and pay their respects and to remind them of human frailty. The Romanesque entrance arch is carved with signs of the zodiac to the Gothic-Romanesque abbey church.
