Forgotten mountain
The Colle Fauniera is a sombre mountain. Standing high on the edge of the Cottian Alps, connecting the Valle Grana to the Valle dell’Arma, it’s a giant that has witnessed many tragedies.
In 1744, French and Spanish troops were stoned to death by their Savoyard enemies on its slopes, a massacre made all the more terrible by the fact that peace had already been declared in the valley below. Skip forward some 187 years and newlyweds Romolo and Luisa Contini were illegally trekking across the mountain to find a new life in France; days later police were arresting Romolo in Acceglio as Luisa’s body was being recovered from a ravine just south of the Fauniera pass. Tragedies like these are why the Colle Fauniera is better known in some circles as the Colle dei Morti — the Pass of the Dead.
Locals had used this morbid name for centuries when Giro d’Italia organiser Carmine Castellano visited in the late 1990s. Friend and local politician Ferruccio Dardanello had begged Castellano to see the mountain for himself, having long campaigned for its debut at the Giro.
When Castellano visited, he was left speechless by its beauty – how had such a wild colossus been ignored by Italy’s biggest race? He discovered a road flanked by vibrant lilies and violets and delicate edelweiss – one that winds to the skies before falling back down to earth through a patchwork of dairy fields.
Yet as impressed as Castellano was, he was also worried – the road surface into Demonte at its feet was clearly not safe enough for a peloton, and the road’s name was a bad omen for his Catholic beliefs. So he turned to Dardanello and instructed him to repair the descent and change the name. Only then would he have
