The beauty of Torriglia.

Municipality located in the Dell'Antola national park, Torriglia hosts the scientific headquarters, the equestrian center and is a hub for those who want to hike up the high street. The village, in addition to the naturalistic beauties, is rich in historic buildings. Founded in Roman times, the inhabited nucleus was a fief of the Malaspina from 1180, a ducal family from Lunigiana and from the lands in eastern Liguria. Conquered in 1250 by the Fieschi di Lavagna, they enlarged the pre-existing castle of the crenellated tower, used as a prison and a place of torture. From the locality of La Colomba, where we visited the ruins, we descend, crossing the park, to the historic center, along the cobbled streets that flow into the Piazza della Chiesa Madre. Entitled to Sant'Onorato di Arles, it was restored in the seventeenth century and is particular for the very high bell tower that flanks it and for the internal marble statues. The effigies carved on the door are bucolic scenes, in which the vocation of evangelization, which the Diocese had on the population, emerges. We walk under an arch and in a gallery that preserves the life-size portrait of Rosa Garaventa, godmother of the famous saying: 'Bella di Torriglia, everyone wants her nobody takes her!'. With a considerable historical leap we remember the Republic of Torriglia, composed after the aggregation of various partisan divisions. Many young people converged in the brigades, often in defection from the fascist armies, especially the Alpine ones, in 1944. The resistance was strenuous and, despite a tough Nazi-Fascist roundup, after the inevitable disarray, a hospital was set up, schools and high schools were reopened with displaced teachers from neighboring countries. The character of the locality still emerges, when numerous UFO sightings have been reported since 1970. In the equestrian center, horse trekking and green weeks are organized, it is also associated with the CAI and can be referred to as a refuge. Nearby it is possible to visit 'Il Lupo in Liguria' in the locality of Rondanina.