Mathi

Mathi: Identity, History and Landscape of a Piedmontese Village

Stand at the base of the old Benedictine tower behind the church of San Mauro Abate on a January morning, when the village gathers to pull the saint’s float through the streets, and you understand Mathi on its own terms. The stone tower rises above the rooftops as it has for centuries, a fixed point around which the rhythms of a working hill community have turned, from medieval fires and French raids to the thrum of paper machinery in the valley below.

Mathi village in Piedmont sits about 27 kilometres northwest of Turin, at roughly 410 metres above sea level, and draws two kinds of attention: that of visitors tracing the Benedictine heritage of the Lanzo valleys, and that of those curious about the industrial history that brought figures such as Don Giovanni Bosco into the economic life of a small Piedmontese comune. Neither story is exhausted by a single afternoon.

From Longobard Territory to Industrial Village: Mathi Through the Centuries

The earliest layers of Mathi’s history belong to the Benedictine monks who settled here when the village was still a handful of farming households. They built their quarters where the church of San Mauro Abate and the oratory of San Raffaele now stand, and they raised a tower that has outlasted every subsequent ownership. On 4 May 991, in the Alessandrian comune of Visone, the settlement then known as Matingo was formally donated to the Benedictines of the abbey of Pulcherada, marking the beginning of a monastic presence that would shape the village’s physical and cultural identity for several centuries. The abbot-geographer Lirelli, a member of the Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, later recorded the ancient valley territory in his cartographic work, noting the Vallem dicta Amathegis that once formed the broader geographical region identified with Mathi.

Medieval life here was not calm. In 1342, Prince Giacomo d’Acaia ordered the construction of a ricetto — a collective fortified enclosure designed to shelter people, livestock and goods during periods of armed conflict. The structure enclosed roughly 14,000 square metres, with a perimeter wall, two gates and an internal street grid. Fewer than fifty years later, in 1391, a fire destroyed every building inside it; the enclosure was subsequently rebuilt along the same lines. A medieval castle also stood in the village, though today only one tower survives: the structure known locally as il Torrione. By the late eighteenth century, as Benedictine influence waned, Mathi passed into the castellany of Balangero. The early nineteenth century brought a sharp change of register: industrial activity accelerated, with workshops, spinning mills, paper mills and textile manufactories establishing themselves in the area. The Leumann textile concern, for instance, operated here with a workforce running to some 250 employees.

The paper mill founded in 1836 by Michele Antonio Varetto became the defining enterprise of modern Mathi. After Varetto’s death, his widow sold the facility to Don Giovanni Bosco for 100,000 lire; Bosco relaunched it with considerable commercial energy. In 1919 the entire plant passed to the entrepreneur Giacomo Bosso, whose management transformed it into a significant productive centre. The Finnish multinational Ahlström entered the ownership structure in 1964 and remains the current proprietor. The paper mill is still the principal industrial employer in the village today. Between 1939 and 1959, the comune’s name was officially italianised to Mati before the original spelling, Mathi, was restored.

Towers, Chapels and the Traces of a Medieval Enclosure

Church of San Mauro Abate and the Benedictine Tower

The parish church dedicated to San Mauro Abate anchors the historic core of the village both visually and liturgically. Behind it, the tower raised by the early Benedictine community remains standing, and the two structures together are recognised as the symbolic landmarks of Mathi. The tower’s stonework conveys the settlement’s monastic origins more directly than any document, and the spatial relationship between the church, the oratory of San Raffaele and the tower repays careful observation on foot. The feast of San Mauro on 15 January draws the community together for a religious procession in which the saint’s statue, placed on a float, is pulled through the village streets by young people who have recently turned eighteen.

Il Torrione

The solitary tower known as il Torrione is what survives of a medieval castle that once dominated the village. Stripped of the structure that surrounded it, the tower stands as a physical record of a defensive and residential complex that characterised Mathi’s landscape during the medieval period. It is one of the more immediate and legible historical markers in the village, requiring no specialist knowledge to appreciate its scale and function. Visitors moving through the older parts of the village will encounter it without difficulty.

Traces of the Medieval Ricetto

The ricetto ordered by Giacomo d’Acaia in the mid-fourteenth century no longer stands intact, but its outline has not entirely disappeared. Walking along the bealera — the traditional irrigation channel — near the parish church, or taking the route between via Rivera and via Grosso, it is still possible to read faint traces of the enclosure’s perimeter in the fabric of the village. These remnants, fragmentary as they are, place Mathi within the broader tradition of collective fortified structures found across medieval Piedmont. They are easy to overlook; they reward attention from visitors with an interest in vernacular defensive architecture.

The Village Chapels

Mathi preserves several smaller religious buildings in addition to the parish church: the Cappella di San Rocco, the Cappella di San Grato and the Cappella di Santa Lucia punctuate the village territory and its margins. Chapels of this kind served historical functions that were as much social as devotional, marking boundaries, providing focal points for local feasts and forming the nodes of a devotional geography that still structures the calendar of religious events. The feast of San Grato is among the occasions that continue to animate community life through the year.

The Paper Mill

The Ahlström paper mill is not a heritage site open to visitors in the conventional sense, but it shapes the experience of arriving in Mathi and understanding the village’s economic identity. Its history — running from Varetto’s mid-nineteenth-century enterprise through Don Bosco’s ownership and Giacomo Bosso’s industrial expansion to its current international ownership — is inseparable from the social history of the community. The stadium named after Giacomo Bosso, home ground of A.C. Mathi, reinforces the sense that the industrial and civic spheres in this village have long been intertwined.

In 1342, by order of Prince Giacomo d’Acaia, a ricetto was raised to shelter people, animals and goods in times of war. Less than fifty years later, fire destroyed every building inside it. The enclosure was rebuilt, in the same form, almost immediately.

At the Table: Agricultural Context and Local Flavours

Mathi sits within a provincial food landscape that includes several protected designations well known across the Turin area. The territory falls within reach of Erbaluce di Caluso DOCG, one of the more distinctive white wines of northern Piedmont, as well as the Canavese DOC and the Collina Torinese DOC, which together reflect the varied wine character of the hills between Turin and the pre-Alpine valleys. Among local food traditions, the Sagra della Castagna — the chestnut festival — has a particular resonance in the village calendar, connecting Mathi to the broader culture of mountain and hill harvests that defines much of this part of Piedmont.

The area also falls within the production zone of Ratafià and traditional alpine herb liqueurs, preparations with deep roots in Piedmontese domestic and monastic culture. None of these products is exclusive to Mathi, and the village makes no claim to specialisation in any single foodstuff. What the village does offer, more reliably, is the kind of working-community eating culture — modest, seasonal and local — that fits the profile of a comune whose identity has been shaped more by manufacturing and agriculture than by gastronomy tourism.

Planning your visit and getting there

Mathi is located in the Lanzo valleys, northwest of Turin. The Val Pellice is a different valley system to the southwest near Pinerolo, entirely unconnected to Mathi. The practical distances and journey times below are kept concise on purpose, so the access information stays clear and consistent.

Departure	Distance	Time
Turin (city centre)	approx. 27 km	approx. 35-40 min
Turin Caselle Airport	approx. 15 km	approx. 20-25 min
Lanzo Torinese	approx. 5 km	approx. 10 min
Cirié (stazione ferroviaria)	approx. 10 km	approx. 15 min