Every design for Asti

Long before the wine, Asti was Hasta, a Roman fortified camp on the Tanaro that grew into a city on the road from Tortona to Turin. Its walls once sheltered an emperor fleeing the Visigoths. In the Middle Ages it became a free commune minting its own coins, and its merchants carried trade and credit across Europe.

Today the pace is gentler. The town sits in the Tanaro valley among the vine-covered hills of the Langhe and Montferrat, and it is often called the modern capital of Montferrat. Everyday life is unhurried: errands in the centre, the river to the south, and the familiar walk past the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and the Battistero di San Pietro. Then September arrives, and the mood shifts: the Palio, one of the oldest in Italy, sends horses round the course ridden bareback, and the Douja d'Or wine competition fills the town with Barbera d'Asti and Asti spumante.

Stretches of the Roman walls still stand in the north of the city, and the Domus Romana del Varrone shows how Hasta lived. Wear Asti and you take that long story with you, from the Roman camp to the Museo Alfieriano and the Monumento a Vittorio Alfieri.