Villar San Costanzo

Villar San Costanzo sits at 605 meters at the mouth of the Val Maira, fifteen kilometers northwest of Cuneo at the foot of Monte San Bernardo. The town has two distinct claims. The first is the Riserva Naturale dei Ciciu del Villar, a 64-hectare regional reserve established in 1989, where four hundred and seventy-nine erosion columns rise from the slope between 670 and 1,350 meters.

Each Ciciu, Piedmontese for puppet, is a column of earth and stone capped by a glacial erratic boulder, the cap shielding the soft material beneath from rainfall while the surrounding terrain erodes around it. Local legend says they are the petrified soldiers of Diocletian, frozen by a curse from the martyr Costanzo, a Roman legionary of the Theban Legion killed nearby around 303. The second claim is the Romanesque-Gothic Chiesa di San Costanzo al Monte, built in the twelfth century over an earlier eighth-century foundation, with frescoes from the eleventh century. The complex stands on the slope above the village, on the site of the martyrdom.