Limone Piemonte
A municipality in the upper Vermenagna valley (Cuneo province), at the foot of the Colle di Tenda: a historic holiday and ski resort for Piedmontese travellers on the road to the sea.
Limone Piemonte is a municipality in the province of Cuneo, in the upper Vermenagna valley, at just over a thousand metres of altitude and a short distance from the Colle di Tenda, the pass separating Piedmont from France and the Riviera. The municipal territory covers about 71 square kilometres and had 1,554 inhabitants in 2008; it is one of the region's main summer holiday resorts and winter sports destinations, served by numerous ski lifts.[1] It was already popular with skiers in the 1930s; the town lies on the road and railway that run from Turin down to Ventimiglia.[2]
The town at the pass
Limone's history coincides with that of the pass above it. The Colle di Tenda, at 1,908 metres between the Rocca dell'Abisso (2,755 metres) and the Cima del Becco, was controlled from the 11th century by the counts of Ventimiglia, then by the counts of Tenda, and between 1575 and 1579 passed to Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy. For the House of Savoy the pass became a strategic link: the carriage road was begun by Carlo Emanuele I in 1591 and completed by Vittorio Amedeo III in 1782. The pass's importance declined in 1815, when the Kingdom of Sardinia gained the two Ligurian rivieras, and even more in 1860, with the cession of Nice to France.[3]
Pastures, hamlets and the first holidaymakers
The entry in the Enciclopedia Italiana, written by Piero Landini in the 1930s, describes a municipality in transformation. The population, scattered across numerous hamlets almost all above a thousand metres, had fallen from 3,249 inhabitants in 1871 to 2,013 in 1931; the main village, at 990 metres, had 752 inhabitants in 1921. Almost half the territory was permanent pasture and a sixth woodland; cattle were the main livestock, followed by sheep and goats, though herds were in decline. By then the town was sustained by tourism: "Limone hosts around a thousand holidaymakers during the summer," the encyclopedia noted, adding that in winter it was much frequented by skiers.[2]
The town stood on the 170-kilometre Turin–Ventimiglia road, which crossed the Colle di Tenda at 1,321 metres, and on the state railway of the same line.[2] Substantial ski facilities later developed on the pass, linked to the resort of Limone.[3]
The Colle di Tenda tunnel
The road tunnel under the pass, about three kilometres long, was completed in 1882 and was for a time the longest road tunnel ever built. The peace treaty that followed the Second World War shifted the border and split the tunnel between Italy and France.[4] The route runs between 1,321 and 1,280 metres, and beneath it runs the rail tunnel of the line to Ventimiglia and Nice.[3]
The first works to double the tunnel, with a new gallery and the modernisation of the existing one, began towards the end of the 2000s and had a troubled history: in 2017 the Cuneo public prosecutor's office seized the site over alleged fraud in the construction.[4] Then came the flood.
The 2020 flood and the years of isolation
On 2 October 2020, storm Alex[4] brought up to 500 millimetres of rain to the Cuneo area in twelve hours. The Vermenagna river flooded, Limone was cut off, a bridge collapsed near Tenda and the tunnel was closed; in scale the event was compared to the 1994 flood.[5] It was not the first time bad weather had cut the town off from the sea: already in November 2016 the Cuneo–Ventimiglia railway had been severed between Limone and Ventimiglia.[6]
The tunnel's closure lasted years. In December 2024 the Piedmont Region asked Paris to reopen the link within the year, to make the ski season possible after four winters without it, but the French side replied that the regulations did not properly cover opening a construction site and that it could not authorise this before the official end-of-works date, set for July 2025.[4] The Region's president, Alberto Cirio, visiting the site, reacted as follows:[4]
"I represent the Piedmontese community, the community of Limone, of this valley, of this territory, and someone has to pay for the damage they are suffering."
Deputy Minister for Infrastructure Edoardo Rixi spoke of Alpine passes left blocked "indefinitely over ridiculous funding."[4]
Today
Limone remains one of the main ski resorts in the Cuneo area, and the road to the tunnel runs through the town.[4] Its name returned to an international audience in August 2025, when the Vuelta a España started from Piedmont, with the first three stages held in the region from 23 August: the second stage ran from Alba to Limone Piemonte.[7]
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