Cattedrali Sotterranee di Canelli

Beneath the hill town of Canelli runs a subterranean city: kilometres of tunnels and vaulted galleries dug into the tuff between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, where Italy's great sparkling-wine houses mature their bottles in the silence and steady cool of the earth. The "underground cathedrals" are working cellars, the heart of the UNESCO vineyard landscape of Piedmont.

Why it matters

Canelli's underground cathedrals are industrial heritage in the truest sense: not a museum of production but production itself, still functioning exactly as designed. Dug by hand into the soft tuff of the hill between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the galleries give the wine something no surface cellar can: total darkness, silence and the natural thermal insulation of ancient earth, holding temperature and humidity in the narrow band that méthode classique bottles demand. It was here that Italian sparkling wine found its industrial cradle, and it was the candidature project born in Canelli that anchored the 2014 UNESCO inscription of the Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe, Roero and Monferrato — Italy's fiftieth World Heritage site — through the component known as "Canelli and Asti Spumante". Four historic houses — Bosca, Contratto, Coppo and Gancia — preserve sections of the underground galleries.

What to notice

The underground sections of the historic wine houses each reflect a distinct part of Canelli's cellar heritage. Coppo's galleries extend over five thousand square metres and reach depths of forty metres; their scale and vaulted forms give the cellars their cathedral-like character. Bosca's halls contain artistic installations. Contratto and Gancia preserve the working equipment of sparkling-wine production, including presses, vats, filtration systems and riddling racks. Calcareous tuff insulates the galleries, maintaining cool temperatures and humidity suited to bottle ageing.

Context and history

The first underground rooms at Canelli were simple storage cellars, and digging expanded wherever the soft tuff allowed; from the second half of the nineteenth century, as the sparkling-wine industry founded in the town grew into an export business, kilometres of galleries were excavated beneath the hill, in places descending up to thirty metres or more. Gancia, Contratto, Bosca and Coppo helped establish Canelli as a centre of Italian classic-method sparkling wine. The candidature developed from Canelli contributed to the 2014 UNESCO inscription of the Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont, including the underground cathedrals as an industrial-heritage component.