Every design for Biella

Have you ever met anyone from Biella who did not mention wool? This city at the foot of the Biellese Alps, in northern Piedmont, made its name in the nineteenth century with its textile mills, and it is still an important centre of wool processing. Its story goes back much further: the name first appears as Bugella in a document of 826, and the town grew up around the Battistero di San Giovanni Battista and the church that is now the Cattedrale di Santo Stefano.

What people carry with them is the climb to the Piazzo, the medieval upper town where a bishop granted trade privileges to anyone who settled on the hill, and the Piazza Cisterna at its heart. They remember the mountain streams, the Elvo to the west and the Oropa and the Cervo to the east, the pilgrimage up to the Sanctuary of Oropa, and Sunday walks in the Burcina reserve, where Iron Age tools were dug out of the hillside. Panning for gold in the Elvo is still a local pastime.

If Biella is where you learnt to tell good cloth from ordinary cloth, the Porta della Torrazza and the lanes of the Piazzo are waiting for you on the map.