You don’t need to cross the North Sea to find yourself surrounded by landscapes reminiscent of the Scottish moors. Just go deep into Piedmont, in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, along the narrow and wild Cannobina Valley. This is where Gurro is located, a tiny mountain village where everything – from the houses to the surnames, to the traditional costumes – surprisingly recalls Scotland. They call it “the little Scotland of Piedmont” and whoever arrives up here, among curves and woods, understands it immediately: it’s not just a figure of speech. Gurro has an ancient soul and an identity that has its roots in a story as unlikely as it is fascinating, suspended between legend and reality.
The legend of the Scottish soldiers
According to tradition, way back in 1525, after the defeat in the Battle of Pavia (a conflict forming part of the Italian War of 1521-1526, fought between the French army led by King Francis I and the imperial army of Charles V), some Scottish mercenary soldiers in the service of the King of France, Francis I, were forced to flee. The plan was to return home by crossing the Alps, but the winter was so harsh that the group had to stop in the Cannobina Valley to wait for the thaw. The mountains, the fog, the streams and the barren slopes reminded them of their homeland, therefore, they decided to stay. Thus, at least according to legend, the village of Gurro was born: a Scottish community transplanted into the heart of the Italian Alps. Over time the soldiers integrated with the local population, but retained part of their language, their habits and even the way of building houses.
The historical veracity of this narrative has never been fully confirmed, although no one in Gurro seems to care that much. Here the legend has become collective memory, an element of identity that has resisted for centuries and which is still claimed with pride today. For many scholars, the story of the Scottish mercenaries is not just folklore, given that there are actually linguistic and cultural traces that make the hypothesis plausible.
Architecture and symbols: the Nordic imprint
Walking through the narrow, cobbled streets of Gurro, you immediately notice that this village is unlike any other in Piedmont. The houses are built of gray stone and dark wood, often with external beams arranged in the shape of a saltire – the same symbol that appears on the Scottish flag. It is an unusual detail, almost unique in the entire region, and for many it represents a direct trace of the Nordic origins of the ancient inhabitants.
The town’s urban layout is also particular: the streets are narrow, winding, and wind uphill between arches and stairways that are more reminiscent of Highland villages than classic Italian Alpine villages. The feeling of being in a corner of Scotland is amplified by the surrounding nature: dense forests, pastures, fog that hangs low over the mountains and the sound of the streams that cut through the valley. It is no coincidence that many travelers say that they have felt the same melancholic and powerful atmosphere here that can be felt among the moors of northern Britain.
Words and names that speak Gaelic
In addition to the visual suggestions, Gurro’s language also retains incredible traces of that presumed Scottish descent. According to a study by the University of Zurich, the local dialect contains over 800 terms of Gaelic origin. Some local surnames derive directly from those of the soldiers of the time: “Donaldi” would be the Piedmontese version of “MacDonald”, “Gibi” from “Gibb”, and “Pattriti” from “Fitzpatrick”. It is a detail that intrigues linguists and anthropologists, but above all it reinforces the inhabitants’ belief that their history is authentic.
In the village, the link with Scotland is not just a story to be passed down, but a living component of the local culture. The inhabitants wear it proudly, like an identity mark that distinguishes Gurro from the other villages in the valley: from speech to ways of saying, even some phonetic inflections seem to confirm that something ancient and foreign has truly remained imprinted in the linguistic DNA of the place.
Parties, kilts and bagpipes in the Piedmont mountains
Every year, on the second Sunday of July, Gurro celebrates its Scottish origins with a festival that has no equal in Italy. Men and women parade in traditional dress, wearing tartan, kilt and sporran – the typical Scottish bag worn on the belt. The streets of the village are filled with the sound of bagpipes and the smell of food cooked outdoors, while children wave flags with the cross of St. Andrew. It is a moment of community and identity pride, but also an attraction for tourists who arrive every year intrigued by this singular union between Piedmont and Scotland.
To complete the picture there is the Ethnographic Museum of Gurro and the Cannobina Valley, housed in a historic building in the center of the town. Inside you can admire costumes, utensils, furnishings and documents that tell the story of life in the valley over the centuries, but also finds and testimonies that directly refer to the Scottish origins of the village. It is a must-see for anyone who wants to understand how legend and history merged to become one.
Today Gurro has less than three hundred inhabitants. It is a small, isolated village, suspended between mountains and myth. It has no medieval castles or whiskey distilleries, but it has something rarer: an identity built on storytelling, shared memory and the desire to belong to a different history. Scholars continue to debate the authenticity of Scottish origins, but for the inhabitants the question is irrelevant. In Gurro, Scotland is not just a legend: it is part of the landscape, of the faces, of the names, of everyday gestures.
Visiting this village means entering a suspended dimension, where Italy is tinged with Scottish fog and history merges with imagination. It is a place that teaches how, sometimes, the strongest roots are not those written in documents, but those that live in the memory of a people. And in Gurro, this memory speaks with an accent that smells of moors and north wind.
Sources: TurismoCannobio.it
