The Expat Paradox: Finding Freedom in Italy's Coldest Welcome

Twenty-six kilometers separate Biella from Ivrea, but they might as well be centuries apart.

I’ve already told you about Ivrea—the city that dreamed outward, that built its utopia around Olivetti’s vision, that wanted the world to see what it had created. Biella chose differently. When the textile industry that defined it for generations disappeared, Biella didn’t dream of the future. It turned inward.

There was once a sign at the city entrance—or maybe it’s a legend that captures the truth better than facts ever could—that read something like: “Welcome to Biella—but no one’s expecting you.” In 2018, statistics confirmed what the sign suggested: Biella was officially Italy’s least attractive city, the place no one wanted to move to.

The Hierarchy of Mountain Gods

Walk into any landscape that's bigger and more powerful than you are—any mountain, any ocean, any desert, any forest dark enough to remind you that you're not actually in control—and boot up.

Messages in Stone: Getting Lost Among Prehistoric Secrets

A Sunday Walk Through 4,000 Years of Mystery (and Wild Boar Territory) in Bessa Natural Reserve, Piedmont

Sunday afternoon, trapped at my computer, the November sun mocking me through the window. Then salvation arrived via email: a package waiting at the Locker. Fifteen minutes there and back, I told myself. Just fifteen minutes.

But the day was impossibly beautiful—that rare late autumn gift when the light turns golden and you can feel winter’s approach making every warm hour precious. I had two, maybe three hours before it got dark. Where could I go?

My friend wasn’t home. The closest option was Vermogno, the Bessa park, where humans have been digging for gold for millennia. I’d walked there dozens of times, at least twice a year, always on the well-maintained trails. But this time, I noticed something new at the trailhead: a sign pointing toward “Percorso delle incisioni rupestri”—the path of prehistoric rock carvings.

Continue reading: https://exegi.substack.com/p/messages-in-stone-getting-lost-among

The Village of Secrets: Every Stone Speaks in Symbols

 Inside Rosazza—Italy's Most Mysterious Village, Built by Freemasons to Transform the Soul Rosazza, Province of Biella, Piedmont

Sometimes the rain knows something you don’t.

Google promised a dry afternoon, but the sky had other plans. By the time I left my car at the village entrance, the drizzle had turned serious, insistent, the kind of rain that soaks through optimism and practical planning alike.

I had no destination, no agenda—just a pull I couldn’t name, urging me toward Rosazza on this grey November day.

I’d been here before, of course. Many times. But always rushing, always with somewhere else to be. This time, drenched and aimless, I finally saw what I’d been missing.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-village-of-secrets-every-stone

Where Triangles Point to Heaven

The wild boars weren't expecting company for dinner. Neither was I expecting to find myself clinging to a rocky slope in the Italian Alps.

 No proper path beneath my feet, just brambles and determination, chasing a mysterious temple that hung somewhere above my head like a promise. But that’s what happens when you follow Federico Rosazza’s ghost through the mountains near Biella.

In 1850s Italy, while most politicians were content with Rome’s marble corridors, Senator Federico Rosazza was building roads through impossible terrain. Not just any roads—sacred paths connecting the Sanctuary of Oropa to the Sanctuary of San Giovanni, including a tunnel carved through solid mountain. Along this route, perched on a scenic overlook that only a man possessed by grief and mysticism would choose, he built something strange: the Tempietto del Belvedere.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/where-triangles-point-to-heaven