Occitan old town of Guardia Piemontese

The old town of Guardia Piemontese is a web of stone-paved alleys gathered on a hill 515 metres above the Tyrrhenian, beneath the watchtower built around the year 1000 to spot Saracen ships: from the square at its foot, where shows are held in summer, the eye runs over the whole gulf. Here lives the language that makes the village unique, Guardiolo, a variety of Occitan brought by Waldensian settlers from the Piedmont valleys and still used at home by a good part of the inhabitants; until the 1950s each quarter spoke its own variant.

The church of Sant’Andrea apostolo, the patron’s, is recognised by its tuff portal topped by the coat of arms with the tower. The church of the Santissimo Rosario was the friary of the Dominicans, founded in 1600 and consecrated in 1616, when the friars came to watch over the converted former Waldensians: it keeps a hand-carved mid-17th-century wooden choir, with 33 stalls in two tiers, armrests with female figures and panels separated by tall columns, as well as old canvases and large frescoes; behind the altar lies Mario Spinelli, son of the marquis Salvatore, who died in 1636. Of the same feudal lord remains the portal of the Spinelli palace, his summer residence, with the crowned swan of the family arms. The village gates, the peephole doors and the Val Pellice Rock tell instead of the night of 1561, and in the “Chambra dal Conselh” on via Marco Usceglio the Gàrdia d’Òc association keeps the Occitan question alive.