Carrosio

Continuing downstream, leaving behind Voltaggio, down to Carrosio.

Further down the valley towards Gavi, which is by Voltaggio fifteen minutes drive away. The road runs parallel to the river on the left hillside and occasionally has some sharp rise. In the woods, chestnut gives way to the fir, but these forests born under the pressure of recent reforestation. Along the Lemme predominate poplars and timidly makes its appearance in  vine; here and there you can also see the mulberry tree, remembering the days when they bred silkworms.
 

Halfway there's Carrosio, indomitable old feud, hostile against Genoa. To circumvent the territory, the Republic, in the mid eighteenth century, had given a mandate to its illustrious servant, the engineer Matteo Vinzoni, to set up a system of roads that from Voltaggio could  reach Gavi climbing up the thickets of Bruseta.

Vinzoni worked on the project a lot of years, but then, faithful executor of orders and critical at the same time he was, advised the Magnificent Seven against that thorny route. Better would be paying twenty toll money and step few feet of Carrosio territory ...

It seems incredible that this town, apparently so modest and now cut out from a providential trafficking ring, has given so much hard time to the Genoese, undisputed lords for centuries across the valley. And not just to Genoa. In 1625, during the War of Francosavoiardi against Genoa, the troops of Carlo Emanuele I had camped at Carrosio. There the polceveraschi played the Duke a mockery of which is still willingly spoken here today. Entered in the field at night, they stole 400 cattle, intended to tow the guns and 22 heavy artillery pieces, leaving the army of the Duke in the lurch. But there's more. Carrosio, for its extra-territorial position from the Genoese, was often a refuge for bandits and, towards the end of '700, the Republicans Piedmont patriots fled from the Savoy territories. To fight them, they moved even the royal army and the event was called "Carrosio war." Of this past exists today of Carrosio only the memory. It became in the 800 site of an important Jute Factory, the town developed along the road of the Vallemme and grew larger.

From Carrosio Gavi is at a short step, but it deserves first mention two sixteenth-century villas, which are seen on the left of the road, the one, the Toledana, close to Carrosio, the other, the Centuriona, further towards Gavi. These villas-farm were built by noble families of Genoa towards the end of '500 on architectural model of the summer residences of the town periphery, except surrounding them with rustic buildings for the housing of livestock and housing for farmers. Old drawings show the Centuriona closed  between solid walls, with the naked and square corner tower. Today remains the central building with the tower. Villa Cambiaso, already Lercari, called the Toledana, with the two symmetrical towers at the outer corners towards the countryside, with a more moderate shape.