
Via Montabone, 1, 10050 Borgone Susa
The town appears to be among the properties mentioned in 1029 by Olderico Manfredi and even earlier by Abbone, founder of the Novalesa Abbey. The oldest residential area is gathered around the hill on which Castlas stands along the road that leads to the Chiantusello village. The tower, severed in the upper part, and the wall remains suggest that it was the keep of a larger construction from the 12th century, comparable in terms of its surveillance function of the territory to the many strongholds of the Susa Valley.
In the seventeenth century, with the expansion of Villa Nova in the flatter area in the direction of the Dora, the construction of Palazzo Montabone (1696), surname of the last owner family and from which the Municipality acquired the building to make it the Town Hall and the schools. The elegant structure externally presents a majestic gneiss staircase, while inside on the main floor the reception rooms still retain eighteenth-century wooden furnishings, Flemish school canvases dating back to the eighteenth century and a splendid coffered wooden ceiling and painted decorations in bright colors but elegant. Not far away, the parish church of San Nicola, already mentioned in the oldest documents, was restored and enlarged in 1769 and preserves some eighteenth and seventeenth century paintings among its furnishings. There are three examples of sacred art in the Borgone area: the country chapel of San Valeriano, built in the 11th century, preserves the fresco of the Pantocrator in the apse, albeit fragmentary.
The Borgone area has been inhabited since the Bronze Age as shown by the findings of finds and some rock and cuppel carvings, but the archaeological area of the Mohammed connected to a stretch of the Via ad Galliam is certainly unique. An aedicule carved in bas-relief on the wall which popular tradition wanted to identify with Muhammad, but which is probably a Silvan god with a short tunic and a cloak, with both arms raised upwards and a dog. Perhaps an ancient place of worship, connected to the protective function of the god in an area where, in addition to forestry and pastoral activities, quarrying and mining activities are also documented. Precisely the extraction and squaring of cut stones was one of the main entrepreneurial activities of the town, like other centers in the lower Susa Valley: gneiss stone was used for the construction of monuments, houses, bridges, millstones, roof coverings (loze), churches, curbs and pavement slabs. The presence of the railway station along the line towards Turin favored the trade of Pietra di Borgone, and also created the conditions for the installation of a new economic activity: in 1881 the textile factory of the Swiss company Wild & Abegg was opened, one of the first industrial centers of the Valley.