The Square at the Centre of Everything: Albergo del Bramante, Roccaverano
10 minutes from Villa Asti, at the top of the hill and in the heart of the old village, there is a square that earns the word.
The Piazza Botero in Roccaverano is flanked on one side by the ruins of a medieval castle, and on another by the Church of the Annunziata — an early work by Donato Bramante, the same architect who would later design the plans for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Between them, occupying the ground floor of a carefully restored 19th-century building, is the Albergo del Bramante.
It is a good place to know about.
The restaurant
The late Giselda Nervi — a Roccaverano local — opened the Bramante restaurant and bar in 2012. The kitchen works the way the best village kitchens in Piemonte always have: whatever is in season, whatever is local, cooked simply and without apology.
The tajarin — the thin egg pasta that is this region's great contribution to Italian cooking — comes with sauces that change through the year. The ravioli del plin, the small pinched pasta parcels that take a steady hand and a certain stubbornness to make properly, are the real thing. There are boards of local charcuterie and the cheese that is made in the farms on the hills around you: Robiola di Roccaverano DOP, served at different stages of ageing so you can taste exactly what a few days, and then a few weeks, does to the same fresh milk.
The wine list runs to the full breadth of Piemonte — Barbera, Dolcetto, Nebbiolo, Moscato — and is priced as a village wine list should be.
A tasting menu of two starters, a primo, a secondo and dessert runs to around €40. It is not a typo. You have to try this..!
The rooms
The Bramante operates as an albergo diffuso — a concept born in the 1980s as a way of bringing old Italian village buildings back to life as connected accommodation rather than single hotels. The eight rooms are spread through the historic centre, each in a restored building that has been part of Roccaverano for a very long time.
For guests at Villa Asti, this is less a place to stay than a place to know about: if someone in your group wants a night in the village rather than the villa, or if an extra guest needs a bed, the Bramante is the right answer. It is also, on its own terms, worth recommending to anyone asking where to stay in this corner of Piemonte.
The square itself
On summer evenings the tables come out onto the piazza. The castle ruins are lit. The Bramante facade is warm against the stone of the village. It is the kind of scene that makes people from northern Europe briefly question the choices they have made in life.
We are fortunate to have it ten minutes away.
Albergo del Bramante, Piazza Botero, Roccaverano — albergobramante.it