Valle Arroscia
Ortovero
In Ortovero one of the four locations of the Enoteca Regionale della Liguria is located, where you can taste and buy local wines (the white Pigato and Vermentino and the reds Rossese and Ormeasco) and others the other wines produced in other areas of Liguria, both east that of west. Other fruits that this lucky territory offers are peaches and fruit and vegetables, extra virgin olive oil and magnificent flowers and plants grown outdoors and in greenhouses. The main township of Strà reveals its most original character is suggestive in the most ancient part of the inhabited area, the one that rises right in a shelter of the course of the Arroscia, where you can fully breathe the atmosphere of the Ligurian villages characterized by narrow streets and houses leaning against each other.
Going up the Valley, after only two kilometers, you reach Pogli, the most important village of Ortovero, a fortified town in the city of Albenga in 1288 for defensive purposes, as an outpost for a barrier at the mouth of the Arroscia Valley. Two towers are still easily recognizable, while little remains of the ancient walls. Pogli was the birthplace of Fra Ave Maria in 1900, a hermit of Divine Providence who was going blind due to an accident as a boy, born of the church as a Venerable. In Pogli his birthplace is visible in the center of the village. During Holy Week there are important rituals that have entered the religious and folk tradition of Ortovero, such as the blessing and distribution of the bread on Holy Thursday and the Procession of the Balzo on Friday morning, determined in the evening by the procession with the dead Christ and the characteristic crucifixes art. As already mentioned, ortovero stands on particular sandy and clayey soils, rich in fossils dating back to the Pliocene, which have the name of Argille di Ortovero, and which can be included in the Rio Marassano area, just beyond the hamlet of Pozzo: The valuable natural context dotted with paths and trails, see also trekking that in the end also sees the presence of a marsh turtle endemic to the area.