Torre Campanaria and Piazza Castello, La Morra site features

The village runs along a ridge, and this square is at the end of it. That is the whole mechanism of the view: there is nothing between you and the valley.

What you are looking at is the Barolo amphitheatre — the surrounding villages on their own ridges, and the hills between them under vines. The Langhe were inscribed by UNESCO on 22 June 2014, and this is one of the three listed components. It is a working agricultural landscape, and it looks like one: every slope in view is somebody's crop.

Behind you, the torre campanaria of 1710. Look at the stone rather than the shape — it came out of a castle that was pulled down in 1544, and the square is still called Piazza Castello because of it.

At the tower's foot, two things worth finding. The bust of Giuseppe Gabetti by Giuseppe Realini: Gabetti wrote the Marcia reale, the first national anthem Italy had. And an empty plinth where a bronze used to be — Antonio Munciguerra's Vignaiolo d'Italia of 1972, the Italian Winegrower, stolen in December 2018 while the square around it was being relaid.

One side of the square is the elementary school of 1914, which is a working school and not a monument.

The view

The square offers a spectacular view over the surrounding villages and the hills cultivated with vineyards. This is the single thing La Morra is known for, and it is free and permanently available.

The torre campanaria, 1710

Built with the remains of the castle demolished in 1544. A bell tower recycled out of a fortress, on the fortress's own ground, a century and a half after the fortress came down.

Piazza Castello, and the missing castle

The square is named for a building abbattuto nel 1544. Nothing of it stands. The name and the tower's masonry are what is left.

The empty plinth: Vignaiolo d'Italia

The bronze monument to the Italian Winegrower, by Antonio Munciguerra, 1972, stood a few steps from the tower. It was stolen in December 2018, during works to redo the square in front of it. A monument to the people who made this landscape, taken off the landscape's best viewpoint.

The bust of Giuseppe Gabetti

In marble, by Giuseppe Realini. Gabetti was the 19th-century composer of the Marcia reale, the first anthem of Italy.

The school of 1914

The elementary school building closes one side of the square. It is the reason the belvedere has children in it on weekday mornings.