Comune Cassinelle

via Garibaldi - 15070 Cassinelle (AL)
Tel. +39 0143 848129
Fax: +39 (0143) 848.139
E-mail: info@comune.cassinelle.al.it

Setting off from the main square we encounter the Church of San Defendente which preserves the statue of the Black Madonna of Loreto in the central niche of the high altar. At the end of the right nave, in a glass urn, the remains of San Defendente, transferred here from Rome in 1742. A legend tells of the arrival of the Saint's remains in Cassinelle: the body was donated to the village by one of his devotees, who entrusted the abbot of Molare to deliver it to the people of Cassinelle. Once the body arrived to Voltri, the dockworkers who took charge of it got lost and arrived in Molare. Here, the inhabitants sent them towards their church, but the glass urn got so heavy that it could no longer be moved; following many attempts and frightened by what had happened, the people who wanted to hold on to the body gave directions for Cassinelle, where the remains arrived at the church where they were meant to be. In the highest part of the town stands Oratorio of San Giovanni Battista, seat of the Confraternity by the same name; it presents a Baroque facade and a simple interior, which preserves a collection of processional crucifixes. Close to the cemetery is the Church of Santa Margherita: the former parish church was completed around 1710; now de-consecrated, originally it had three naves but today only the central nave remains. It is now the seat of the Museum of the Territory. On the road which connects Cassinelle to Bandita is the Church of the Madonnina, built in 1854 to thank the Virgin for having saved the village from a cholera epidemic.

History
The remains of the castle and walls of Cassinelle, burned to the ground around 1830, are evidence that the area was fortified during the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century the territory was controlled by the Marquises del Bosco and later passed to the Malaspina; it was then occupied by the Sforza and then by the Duke of Mantua; from the early eighteenth century it passed to Victor Amadeus II of Savoy and became a fiefdom, first of the Gentili of Genoa and later of the Spinola of Lerma.

Curiosities
Part of the area to which Cassinelle belongs is characterized by a rock formation, called "Pietre Verdi" (Green stones), due to the dominating color. Its formation dates to the Jurassic-Cretaceous period, when the backbone of the Apennines was formed on the bottoms of an ocean. For this reason, in the area of the Amione torrent, it is possible to find fossils of plants, shells and animals that lived millions of years ago.