Highlights
Votive chapel made of Langa stone on the Romanesque bridge built by Benedictine monks.
The bridge is one of the most important civil engineering works in the Bormida Valley.
Through the characteristic alley called the Droc - where once there was one of the city gates and where the access to an old bakery can still be seen, you can quickly reach the Romanesque bridge over the Bormida, which represents one of the most interesting medieval civil engineering works in the valley and finds its counterpart, in that of Spigno, in the similar bridge of the abbey of San Quentin. Both were built by Benedictine monks.
They are mighty hump-backed structures topped by chapels that were ancient guard posts by which the monks secured complete commercial control of the land stretching between the Langa and the sea.
The one in Monastero, in particular, was the only bridge that could be crossed all year round from the lower valley: Acqui lacked one, and Vesime had the ruins of a very old Roman bridge, which was never permanently rebuilt after it was destroyed by a flood.
At Convent two very important ways converged: the one that led from Acqui to the sea and the military one that climbed to Roccaverano and, from the ridge, allowed the control of the two Bormida valleys, with the system of the towers of Vengore, Roccaverano, San Giorgio, Olmo Gentile, Serole, Torre Uzzone, Santa Giulia and Carretto.
So either the fords were used or the Monastero bridge, at the top of which it was necessary to pay a tax to the guard in order to pass through (to this day the saying 'I don't even have a penny to pass Bormida' is still common).
The old monument, after eight hundred years, still resists, with the four large arches perfectly squared stone arches and the triangular blocks at the pillars, specifically designed to 'cut' the water and avoid unnecessary barriers in case of floods.
Augusto Monti recalls the great floods of the nineteenth century, which swept away the parapets, but did not affect the structure (“every other bridge upstream and downstream Bormida is easily destroyed, but this is always there, intact over the centuries, by of that cement, because the friars put out the lime with the egg white, and of the reds they made a zabaione”), while during the Second World War the small chapel placed on the top was used for military purposes, as an anti-aircraft station.
The disastrous flood of 1994 seriously threatened the stillness of the building: the water and the wood massed by the current destroyed the parapets and the historic small chapel, unhinged the asphalt, reduced the bridge to the exile figure of the arches. But the worst has not happened and that of Monastero, even if in need of important restorations, is one of the few bridges that have been made accessible to traffic after a few days of closure.
See also...
• Monastero Bormida tourist guide
