Cintano is a Canavese municipality in the Sacred Valley with a singular shape, somewhat elongated from south to north with a bottleneck in the middle, washed along its entire length by the Piova stream.
Bertolotti in his ’Passeggiate nel Canavese - Vol. V - 1871’ states that the ’name of the village may have derived from the enclosure of the first cottages, having Cinctum per murorum ambitus’. Historically, the village followed the fate of the Sacred Valley and was enfeoffed to a branch of the S. Martino family, that of Castelnuovo.
The beautiful parish church of San Giovanni is the oldest in the valley and brought together the population of Villa and Sale, which were communes until the last century. As far as churches are concerned, we cannot fail to mention the Sanctuary of Piova, one of the best known and most renowned in the entire Sacred Valley, and the chapel of Sant’Ignazio, a pretty little temple located in the picturesque hamlet of Malpasso, an excellent destination for an excursion also because the surrounding area is equipped for picnics. But the entire territory of Cintano is surrounded by restful meadows, pastures and forests.
In 2020, the 250 or so inhabitants of Cintano decided to come to terms with recent history: the town council revoked the honorary citizenship that had been granted to Benito Mussolini in 1924 to confer it on life senator Liliana Segre and Sami Modiano, witnesses of the Shoah, among the only 25 survivors of the 776 Italian Jewish children under the age of 14 who were deported to the Nazi extermination camps.
Bertolotti in his ’Passeggiate nel Canavese - Vol. V - 1871’ states that the ’name of the village may have derived from the enclosure of the first cottages, having Cinctum per murorum ambitus’. Historically, the village followed the fate of the Sacred Valley and was enfeoffed to a branch of the S. Martino family, that of Castelnuovo.
The beautiful parish church of San Giovanni is the oldest in the valley and brought together the population of Villa and Sale, which were communes until the last century. As far as churches are concerned, we cannot fail to mention the Sanctuary of Piova, one of the best known and most renowned in the entire Sacred Valley, and the chapel of Sant’Ignazio, a pretty little temple located in the picturesque hamlet of Malpasso, an excellent destination for an excursion also because the surrounding area is equipped for picnics. But the entire territory of Cintano is surrounded by restful meadows, pastures and forests.
In 2020, the 250 or so inhabitants of Cintano decided to come to terms with recent history: the town council revoked the honorary citizenship that had been granted to Benito Mussolini in 1924 to confer it on life senator Liliana Segre and Sami Modiano, witnesses of the Shoah, among the only 25 survivors of the 776 Italian Jewish children under the age of 14 who were deported to the Nazi extermination camps.