Canonica dei Templari

The Monferrato region is renowned for its excellent wines and hearty dishes rooted in peasant tradition. In the numerous restaurants in the area, you can taste the best products made with Barbera, Grignolino, Freisa, and Chardonnay grapes, which pair well with mixed Piedmontese fried foods, boiled meat, green sauce, and bagna cauda.

You can enjoy vibrant red sunsets or the soft and enchanting mists that embrace the hills and move between the vineyards. After spending your days in the woods, you can warm up next to cozy fireplaces.

You can also treat yourself to some delicious shopping by visiting local producers of honey, cheeses, cured meats, truffles, fruits, and vegetables. Monferrato is a land rich in history and legends, with its churches and abbeys. You will find castles that dominate the vine-covered hills.

From the Templar Canonica, you can easily reach Casale Monferrato with its historic center, castle, synagogue, and Jewish culture museum. From the windows of the Canonica, you can admire the castle of Camino, considered one of the most beautiful in Italy, with its frescoed halls, reachable through a pleasant and scenic walk. You can also visit the castle of Gabiano, with its beautiful park, and make a stop at the wine shop.

An unmissable excursion is the one among the chapels of the 16th-century Sacro Monte di Crea Sanctuary, which culminates in the Cappella Paradiso, where you can admire the Alpine arch, clearly distinguishing Monte Rosa and Monviso, rice fields, and the Po River Park.

In the last stretch of Piedmont, the Po River flows through a landscape dominated by hills and rice fields before widening when it meets natural and wild environments. It is a true paradise for cycling, trekking, and birdwatching enthusiasts, with the possibility of observing herons and white and gray egrets in the rice fields, diurnal and nocturnal birds of prey such as kites, owls, barn owls, and hawks in the woods, and buzzards nesting near the Canonica.

Sports activities that can be practiced in the surrounding area include fishing, cycling (thanks to the new Venice-Turin cycle path), golf, parachuting, mountain biking, trekking, horseback riding, Nordic walking, motocross, and quad biking.