A region that sits at the foot of the mountains, and says so in its name

Piedmont means at the foot of the mountains, and the description still holds. Almost half the region is mountain, with the Alps closing it in from the Ligurian border to the Simplon, and the rest is hill and plain. It is the second largest Italian region by area after Sicily, but nearly all the people live in a triangle between Turin, Novara and Alessandria.

How it is laid out

The design is simple: an arc of mountains, a band of hills, and in between the plain crossed by the Po. The alpine valleys all run down towards the centre like the spokes of a wheel, and each has its own road and its own character: the Occitan valleys above Cuneo are nothing like the Ossola, and the Val di Susa is nothing like the Valsesia.

Between Vercelli and Novara the plain is under water for half the year: almost all Italian rice is grown here, and in spring the fields are a sheet of water reflecting the Alps. It is a landscape found nowhere else in Europe.

Where the campsites are

On Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta, in the provinces of Novara and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola. They are lakeside sites, with a jetty or a small beach, and many have mountains behind them. Elsewhere there are a few around Turin, in the Cuneo area and around Alessandria, but they are isolated cases: anyone wanting the Langhe or the Alps travels out for the day.

There is also a historical reason why Piedmont is unlike its neighbours: for centuries it was a state of its own, the Duchy of Savoy, with a court, an army and a capital. That is where the order of Turin's streets comes from, the ring of palaces around the city, and a certain formality of manner that Piedmontese people are credited with and generally do not deny.

Here the wine is made where nothing else will grow, and that is why it is good.

A saying of the Langhe, which were among the poorest land in Italy

How to plan it

From Lake Maggiore, Turin is an hour and a half away, the Langhe two hours, Gran Paradiso two and a half. The motorway network is dense and the trunk roads are good, so almost everything can be done in a day; the alpine valleys, on the other hand, have to be entered and left by the same road, because the passes between one valley and the next are high and often shut.

Summer on the lakes is busy in July and August, but never as busy as Lake Garda. May, June and September are the best months: the swimming is the same and there are no queues for the islands.