The Apple Orchard
THE GOZZANO FAMILY COUNTRY VILLA

The Gozzano family’s country villa was called Meleto (Apple Orchard) due to the rustic environment from which it rises up at the foot of the hill near the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, better known as the Church of the Tre Ciochè.

Gozzano sold the villa in 1912, at the first signs of his illness.

It is privately owned but it is open to the public. It still houses the memoirs of the poet, some of his personal effects, the library and bedroom, donated by his mother and brother.

Agliè in the Memoirs of Guido Gozzano
(Turin 19 December 1883 - Turin 9 August 1916)
AGLIÈ
"THAT SWEET TOWN THAT I WILL NOT MENTION"

There is truly no greater pleasure
than to go to Agliè
than to go to Agliè
(from the first verses by Gozzano)

How beautiful the countryside is these days! How beautiful it would be to enjoy it rather than suffocating on the school benches!!...
[...] Won’t we vent our feelings at Agliè? In our beautiful plains?
(June 1899 from a letter to his friend Ettore Colla)

I’ve been in Agliè for two months now, at Meleto, a vulgar and unimaginative farmstead, if it weren’t for me populating it with all my eccentricities!
23 October 1908 from a letter to Giulio De Frenzi

How can I say it….in Agliè there has been a sort of…… blossoming (this expression is too poetic, but I can find no other words!) there has been a blossoming of children in Agliè, almost all the same age, they were born under the shadow of the same bell tower, like brothers, linked to each other by the friendship handed down from generation to generation like a loving legacy. That blossoming – I can find no other words – is us.
(from Ettore Colla’s and Umberto Guadina’s graduation speech, 1906)