Butterflies in the Vineyard: a Weekend at an Old Farmhouse in Dogliani – Part I

Towards the middle of the 1800s, if someone, kept awake by insomnia, woke at dawn or decided to take a walk around midnight, they would not have met only the odd stray dog wandering the deserted little streets of Dogliani. They were more likely to come across a gentleman with an artist's hair, a quirky style and a breathless air. Perhaps they would pass him as he was measuring a wall, or as he was going to wake a ceramist or a sculptor to set out his latest project. Giovanni Battista Schellino was the name of this tireless self-taught architect, capable of working even eighteen hours a day, and he is one of the most famous figures to whom Dogliani gave birth.

Some call him the Gaudí of the Langhe, and looking at certain of his works, like the suggestive spires of the town cemetery or the hospital building, not to mention the many wonderful churches scattered across Piedmont, the comparison holds.

We begin discovering this lovely Langhe town with one of the main works of the surveyor Schellino, who was awarded the title of architect only after his death: the parish church of Santi Quirico e Paolo. The building of this wonderful religious edifice lasted a good ten years, from 1859 to 1869, but its imposing dome, which shapes the town skyline, was completed only in 1886. The works kept inside the church are also fine, including 16th- and 17th-century canvases and a Stations of the Cross by Gaetano Previati.

Walking through the little streets of Dogliani, a town inhabited by Ligurians since pre-Roman times, you can still recognise its medieval layout with the castle and the walled village. Reminders of that era are also the massive keep, reworked several times over the centuries, and the ancient entrance gates to the walled town, Porta Soprana and Porta Sottana.

Besides its many monuments of historic and artistic interest, including the church of San Lorenzo whose origins go back to the year 1000, Dogliani is loved by tourists also, and perhaps mainly, for its famous Dolcetto d.o.c.g. wine and for the landscape of extraordinarily beautiful vineyards in which it is set. According to some studies, the wine "flows" even in the name of the municipality, perhaps deriving from Dolium Januae, or "Cup of Janus".