Every design for Cuneo

Cuneo takes its name from its shape: the old town sits on a wedge of high ground at the point where the Stura and the Gesso meet, with the Alps on one side and the Po plain opening out on the other. The Savoy rulers turned it into a fortress town, and it held out against siege after siege from France.

The Complesso monumentale di San Francesco, now a museum, is a good place to begin. From the tip of the wedge a long central street runs through the grid of the old town to the vast Piazza Galimberti, where everyone seems to cross paths sooner or later. Nearby are the Casa Galimberti and the Museo Diocesano San Sebastiano; during the Second World War, Cuneo was one of the main centres of the partisan resistance. Below the town, the river park along the Gesso and the Stura gives Cuneo its nickname, the green capital of Piedmont.

It is also Italy's snowiest provincial capital, and on clear winter mornings the white peaks seem close enough to touch from the end of the main street.