Langhe

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Langhe: the meaning

To comprise the meaning of the term "Langhe" we can go back to different interpretations of the experts: somebody for example, deduces it from the Latin linguae, term that  would indicate the typical roads shape that remembers many strips. Others support the thesis of the Liguria descendancys of the name from the tribe longense, old people of which it is known little or nothing. For someone else the derivation would be celtic and would derive from the characterizing term "landu" or "londe" one desert and brush region. Finally It has taken consistency the hypothesis of a Liguria name origin, from "lanca" that  would indicate hills or sinkings. 

In particular the langenses were a tribe from Liguria, the Appennine zone, than stayed at a roman age territory, while the first meaningful reference on the territory of the Langa has been found in a diploma of the emperor Brass III of the period around to the year 1000, addressed to the bishop of Savona. Agostino della Chiesa instead, attributes to the name "Langhe" a pure geographic meaning. In the paper of Laliot, written in Paris in the year 1706, a line traced the borders between Dogliani and Ceva, crossing the centers of Belvedere and Murazzano and came to indicate with the term "Langa di Mulassano". As far as the characteristic of the "earth languages", a French traveller who journeyed in the Piemonte in the 1800, observed that the arrondissement of Alba is made of hills and valleys and languages of earth of one admirable fecundity. In the same period the prefect of Alba distinguished the land beyond the Tanaro river, rich and promising for its flourishing commerce, in two set: the Low and the High Langa. 

Langhe: the geographic conformation

The word "Langhe" today indicates the hills territory high between 450 and 800 meters, comprised between the Tanaro and the Bormida rivers: it's a kind of land characterized from extraordinary fecundity.
The main hill conformation of the Langhe territory is constituted of long ridges emerged from the ancient marine mirror, fed in direction north-south and uniforms between furrow dig from numerous making torrents head to the Tanaro river basin.

Somebody in fact say that  the Langhe are born due to the transformation of the Padano sea in the third age deriving from conglomerates of sandstone conformations, marble, soccer and chalks.

Even if the area is located in proximity of the Alps, these reliefs belong to the Appennine system. Three main hill chains can in particular be distinguished: the east one, between the two Bormide rivers, that one of Thousandth and Spigno, the western one, comprised between the Tanaro and the Belbo river; and the central one, located between the Belbo and the Bormida in Millesimo. Every chain then is characterized by different ramifications that take the name by the countries, the qualities of wine or from the torrents.

The High Langa is located in the center of the two parallel chains: the one that runs from Montezemolo to Bossolasco, until to Lequio Berria, Benevello and Mango; and the chain that leaves from the other part of the Belbo in order to arrive to Castino. 

With the term "Medium Langa" it is usual to define those series of hills, with variable height between the 500 and 600 meters, comprised between the Roddino, the Pedaggera, and the three towns of Manera, Mango and Saint Donato. 

The "Low Langa", finally, indicates all the other hills, with specialistic and intensive cultivations, that come down towards Alba, Dogliani, Canelli, Saint Stefano Belbo and the more important centers of the valley.

Langhe: the literature and the traditions

Since the fifty years the Langhe have entered to make part of the routes of tours like geographic, literary and highly typical zone. The land of the Moon and the bonfires, Cesare Pavese, the Johnny Partisan and the "23 days of the city of Alba", Fenoglio and still the inhabited land from the Won ones of Nuto Revelli and emigrating has become nowadays the rich zone of of the wines (Barolo, Barbera, Moscato, Dolcetto), the white truffle feast, the literary awards (for instance the Grinzane Cavour award), the pleasant castles with their wine cellars and restaurants and their museums.
The hills of the Langhe have become a literary landscape. In the memory of Cesare Pavese there are festivities with the typical dances accompanied from the sound of the fisarmonica, from the good wine and kitchen. Other tourist-literary routes are instead organized in the countries of the High Langa where it often comes represented to theatre the life of the fenogliani personages.

Beppe Fenoglio in fact, writer born in Alba in the 1922, wrote about the the inhabitants of Langa before that the wealth arrived, when they were forced living and work every day in the poverty conditions.

An other literary route of particular curiosity that the Langhe characterizes is that one of the masche, witches that in the popular imaginary generally has the face of  an old one, but can assume the aspect that come to they more congenital: the black cat, the goat or the biwake. In a moment they can also transform themselves in such a way in one tree leaf, hiding to the indiscreet eyes of the strangers yearnings to know their secrets.

Langhe: a unique and extraordinary land

The Langhe, land of noblest wines of the world, the truffle, the wonderful landscapes, the more curious festivals  and of the wonderful castles, they constitute a unique patrimony able to astonish everyone for its beauty: from the tourists of every day to the literary intellectuals of every time.