Realgar-bearing quartz boulders with baryte gangue.

Viozene (A Viuśèna or Viużèna in Brigasco and Ormeasco respectively), is a frazione of the municipality of Ormea, in the Upper Tanaro Valley, Ligurian Alps, in the province of Cuneo, bordering that of Imperia.

It is dominated by the Monte Mongioie massif, and is part of the so-called Terra Brigasca, where Brigasco is spoken, a particular transitional dialect between Ligurian and Occitan. An imaginative popular para-etymology derives its name from "Via de Zéna" (ie "via di Genova"), testifying to the ancient trade between Liguria and Piedmont, especially of olive oil and salt, carried out on the mountain trails by means of mules. All the most authoritative historians and scholars of the past, on the other hand, see in its name, which historically embraces the wide region located between Quarzina and the Colla di Carnino and between the Tanaro-Negrone and the watershed crests, the toponymic relict of the ancient presence of an alpine station of the Ligurian Vagenni. It is a fact that its denomination in the most ancient documents and up to the 19th century is a plural feminine: "le Viozene", i.e. a set of "Alps", that is summer pastures, or "Viozena Alps".

It is a typical mountain village (1248 m asl) which is populated in summer for holidays, it is about fifteen kilometers from the town of Ormea, and can be reached from the hamlet of Ponte di Nava, where the Tanaro river divides the provinces of Cuneo and Imperia. Today with the name of "Viozene", also for the official cartography we mean the main village around the church of San Bartolomeo, which instead for the Viozenesi is the village of the "Patagni". The vast territory of the Viozene includes, in addition to the Patagni, numerous villages or "Ruà" today frequented only in summer, but which together reached the respectable number of 1150 inhabitants at the end of the nineteenth century, they are: Merea, Fasce, Caccino, Logne, Pornassino, Pian del Fo, Celle, Toria, Cuchera, Piumini, Giugato, Talea, Mussi, Montenegro, Le Pianche. Others have existed in the past but today have disappeared or reduced to some ruins, such as Le Vallette below the Castellazzo di Carnino, the houses "ar Pèa" (the Pear) not far from Toria, Zan Pèa (Gio Piero) below Pornassino, Capun, Crocetta, Coppino, Tamburlo.

Of particular interest, in addition to the countless hiking, mountaineering and speleologic activities on the massif of Monte Mongioie, the "little Dolomite" of the Ligurian Alps, are its naturalistic beauties, such as the Passo delle Fascette, a canyon surrounded by rocks and cliffs characterized by the presence of 50 karst cavities detected by speleologists starting from the 1920s and by a complex underground network that determines unique paths of the waters that seasonally disappear and reappear to form the head of the Tanaro.

Viozene, with other mountain resorts, is part of the Terra Brigasca, an alpine area of ​​culture and pastoral traditions between Italy and France.

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viozene
Wikidata ID:	Q3827463

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References