The white truffle capital of the world — Langhe wine country's medieval tower town at harvest season
Alba is the gastronomic capital of Piedmont, the region that gave the world Barolo and Barbaresco wine, white truffles, and hazelnuts. Every October the town explodes with the White Truffle Fair, where a single kilo of Tuber magnatum pico can sell for €3,000 at auction. Beyond truffles, the Langhe hills surrounding Alba are a UNESCO landscape — vine-covered slopes where Barolo, Barbera, and Nebbiolo grapes produce some of Italy's greatest wines.
Alba was the Roman city of Alba Pompeia, birthplace of Emperor Pertinax. Its medieval towers — 100 of them once, a symbol of competing noble families — still punctuate the roofline. The town was a stronghold of the Italian Resistance in 1944, briefly liberated and then recaptured, a story told by Beppe Fenoglio in his celebrated partisan novel 'Johnny the Partisan.' The Langhe hills were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Landscape in 2014.