He reached the ravine and clambered up over its muddy track and was on the slopes of the gigantic, mammoth hill of Mango. The black woods which seemed to be carbonised, leant over him undulatingly, and the open, fleetingly glimpsed grassy slopes on some of which herds were grazing, appeared as high and motionless as a pile of wandering boulders stopped by a miraculous hand in the midst of the vertiginous hillsides.

(Beppe Fenoglio, Johnny the Partisan)

A city of beginnings, a city of endings; for the characters of Cesare Pavese, it was both the door to the world and the insurmountable gate out of their provincial lives. Canelli is the last stronghold of the Langhe (or the first of Monferrato) where the passage of time is still measured by the farmer’s work rather than by city calendars created with the scientific exactness of a watch.

Santo Stefano Belbo is a town with two souls: the first is wine production, as seen by the encircling hills covered in grapevines; and the other is culture, as it’s the birthplace of Cesare Pavese, born in 1908, the great writer who took inspiration from his town for many of his works.