Hello my friends!
Today we are in a small hamlet called Appiotti, which is currently part of the municipality of Torre Pellice… you have to know that in the 19th century houses used to be under jurisdiction of one municipality rather than another one according to the religious confession of its inhabitants; Waldenses would belong to the municipality of San Giovanni, while Catholics to the one of Luserna!
By the way, today I would like to tell you about a legend according to which once, here, there used to be just one farmhouse owned by a young couple. One day the shepherd was following his goat that was climbing the dry bed of the river Angrogna; all of a sudden rain forced him to take refuge under a rock. While he was there he heard some noises, like the sound of a hammer on the anvil, coming from the fortress… he soon discovered a door, walked through it for a while in the dark, until he found himself in front of a second door, beyond which there was a large lit room. Here six men were busy working gold; the man was so enchanted that he stopped there a whole year, without eating nor drinking. Finally he took courage and asked the men if they could give him some of the fabulous forged objects, and thus obtained as a gift a small axe, but he was also warned that if he had ever revealed the place which he had been in, he would have died immediately.
The young boy, as soon as he got back home, asked for some information about the goat, and he discovered that it had found the road back alone… a year before! In fact, it was the time he had spent in the cave believing that only a moment had passed!
Many asked where he had been for all that time, because they thought he was dead, and where he had found that beautiful golden axe… but he always remained silent. Finally one day, exhausted by the insistence of all of those curious people, he told his story… and all of a sudden he fell dead, the axe disappeared, and the poor widow found herself alone. From that day on, the cottage took the name of Apiot (“ax” in piedmontese dialect).
How to get here:
following the Provincial Road 161 you will pass naturally from the municipality of Luserna San Giovanni to that of Torre Pellice; the township is between Appiotti Street and Pietro Micca Square (which is just before the bridge over the Angrogna stream).
Do you want to read the tale in Italian ?