Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

by M. F. Mansfield

This borderland between Lombardy and Piedmont forms the very flower of present day Italy. The diarist Evelyn remarked all this in a more appreciative manner than any writer before or since.

He wrote: “We dined at Marignano near Milan, a grette cittie famous for a cheese a little short of the best Parmeggiano, where we met half a dozen suspicious cavaliers who yet did us no harm. Then passing through a continuous garden we went on with exceeding pleasure, for this is the Paradise of Lombardy, the highways as even and straight as a cord, the fields to a vast extent planted with fruit, and vines climbing every tree planted at equal distances one from the other; likewise there is an abundance of mulberry trees and much corn.”

To arrive on the Riviera from Turin one leaves the roads leading to the high Alpine valleys behind. Directly north from Turin runs the highroad which ultimately debouches into the Val d’Aosta and the Saint Bernard Passes; to the west, those leading through Pinerolo and the Col de Sestrières and Susa and the Cols of Mont Genèvre and Mont Cenis.

Just out of Turin on the road to Cuneo (which is perhaps more often called by its French name, Coni, for you are now heading straight for the frontier, a matter of but a half a hundred kilometres beyond) is Moncalieri, the possessor of a royal chateau where was born, in 1904, Prince Humbert of Piedmont, the present heir to the Italian throne.

When Italy’s present Queen Helena sojourned here after the birth of her son she took her promenades abroad en automobile and so came to be a partisan of the new form of locomotion as already had the dowager Queen before her. The latter may properly enough be called the automobiling monarch of Europe for she is heard of to-day at Aix-les-Bains, to-morrow at Paris or Trouville and the week after at Pallanza or Cadennabia, and in turn in Spain, at Marienbad, Ostend, Biarritz or Nice, and she always travels by road, and at a good pace, too.

This up-to-date queen’s predilection for the automobile in preference to the state coach of other days or the plebeian railway has doubtless had much to do with the development of the automobile industry in Italy. It has, too, made the gateway into Italy from the Riviera over the Col de Tende the good mountain road that it is. Those who pass this way—and it’s the only way worth considering from the South of France to the Italian Lakes—will have cause to bless Italy’s automobiling queen. The chiefs of state of Italy, France and Germany know how to encourage automobilism and all that pertains thereto better than those of Republican America or Monarchial Britain.

Carignano, twelve kilometres beyond Moncalieri, is famous for its silk industry and its beautiful women. We saw nothing of the former, but the latter certainly merit the encomium which has been bestowed upon them ever since the Chevalier Bayard remarked the gentilezza and beauty of the widow Bianca Montferrat, and fought for her in a tournament centuries ago.

Carmagnola, a half a dozen kilometres off the direct road, just beyond Carignano, takes much the same rank as the latter place. Neither are tourist points to the slightest degree, but each is delightfully unworldly and give one glimpses of native life that one may find only in the untravelled hinterland of a well known country. The peasant folk of Carmagnola are as picturesque and gay in their costume and manner of life as one can possibly expect to see in these days when manners and customs are changing before the new order of things. Here is the home of the celebrated Dance of the Carmagnole, a gyrating, whirling, dervish-like fury of a dance which makes a peasant girl of the country look more charming than ever as she swishes and swirls her yards of gold or silver neck beads in a most dazzling fashion. The French Revolution borrowed the “Carmagnole” for its own unspeakable orgies, by what right no one knows, for there is nothing outré about it when seen in its native land. Possibly some alien Savoyards, who may have joined their forces with the Marseilles Batallion, may have brought it to France with their light luggage—proverbially light, for the Savoyard has the reputation of always travelling with a bundle on a stick. Would that we touring automobilists could, or would, travel lighter than we do!

Racconigi, a half a dozen kilometres farther on, has another royal chateau, and, passing Saluzza, through the arch erected in memory of the marriage of Victor Amedeo and Christine of France, one arrives at Cuneo in thirty kilometres more. From Carmagnola to Cuneo direct, by Savigliano, is practically the same distance, but the other route is perhaps the more picturesque.

At Cuneo one has attained an elevation of some five hundred and thirty-five metres above sea level, the rise thence to the Col de Tende being eight hundred metres more, that is to say the pass is crossed at an elevation not exceeding 1,300 metres.