Enjoy a relaxing walk in the woods and discover the remains of ancient gold mines and Roman camps.

Access and parking

Reach the Vermogno visitor centre in Zubiena. Next to the Visitor's Centre, there is a picnic area with benches, tables, barbecue, drinking fountains and convenient parking.

From the same starting point, a path is also easily accessible for wheelchairs or people with disabilities.

Route

From the Vermogno visitor's centre, walk about 100 metres along the tarmac road in the direction of the gold diggers' competition field. Just before the gold diggers' competition field, a paved path, suitable for pushchairs and buggies, leads into the forest. The path soon comes out into the open and the first piles of pebbles appear, with a wide view of the mountains. Proceeding slightly downhill, you reach the base of a high mound on the left, from the top of which you can enjoy a magnificent landscape: Biella and the high plain, the Biellese Alps and the first offshoots of the Serra moraine hills. This area is called "Ciapei Parfundà", i.e. "sunken stones", as the locals tell of the existence of a tunnel that ran through the pebbles. The settlement of the same name, located to the east of the mound, consists of several settlements sunk in the stony ground. One of these, of considerable size (approximately 25 by 5 metres) and connected by corridors to other structures of lesser surface area, was excavated in 1995 and yielded pottery fragments (mainly amphorae) dating from the end of the 2nd to the first half of the 1st century BC.

The path flanks the piles of stones and continues along a gully that further on, at the edge of the terrace, opens out into the "anthropic conoids" that fan out onto the plain below and consist of material resulting from the washing of the gold sands during mining. At this point, the route turns back and, resuming its ascent, continues along the grassy path through a forest of oak and hornbeam trees that turn a deep yellow colour in autumn. After several bends, you come to a wooden footbridge, which ends at the paved path track we took at the beginning of the route, leading us back to the start of the trail.