[3] Silver medal for civil merit "A small town, during the tragic days of the Liberation War, suffered a ferocious reprisal by Nazi troops who rounded up thirty fellow citizens, especially women and older men, brutally masacring them to bursts of gunfire.

With its main villages, S. Margherita, S. Lorenzo, S. Giovenale, Madonna dei Boschi, Montefallonio, Pradeboni (at an altitude of 950 m above sea level), has more than 5000 inhabitants.

Peveragno area, before the Christian era and the subsequent conquest by the Romans, was inhabited by Celtic-Ligurian people whose presence is proven by iron tools and ornaments found on Moncalvino hills (two Paleolithic axes and one from Neolithic) and Castelvecchio.

The villa was located about two kilometers far from Peveragno, in the Madonna dei Boschi village, and was probably built in order to control an important direct road in Provence (passing through Via Grima).

There remain today only the ruins of the "castrum" (a fortress), part of the protection moat, the San Pietro chapel and the "Madonna del Borgato" sanctuary (a clear reference to the ancient village of Forfice).

In 1500 the Inquisition spectrum: dozens of citizens, with the support of the Dominicans (ruins of the monastery are still visible in Piazza San Domenico), were burned at the stake by the terrible inquisitor Biagio de Berra.

In 1744, during the war for the succession to the Austrian throne, an army of Gallo-Hispanic arrived in Piedmont and poses fire and sword territories surrounding Cuneo.

In 1800 a slow and inexorable period of population increase started, which brought the town to reach 7878 inhabitants in 1895, in opposition to a strong flow of emigration: thousands of people left, at least until the middle of 1900, to America and France.

On Monday morning, 10 January 1944, market day, was put in place the most fierce retaliation Nazi-fascist in Peveragno: because of the finding of 3 German soldiers died, 30 unarmed men were taken and, in different ways, killed.

The fame of two citizens even crossed national boundaries: Major Pietro Toselli, fell heroically at Amba Alagi in 1895, at age 39; writer, journalist and playwright Vittorio Bersezio, author of dialect comedy "Le miserie 'd Monsù Travet".

Particularly interesting is the stone coat of arms of the Grimaldi family (1657), Lords of Peveragno in that period, conserved in the sacristy, carried two beaming suns sculpted alternating to two panes of chess.

Originally the church of S. Maria del Paschero had the shape of a quadrangle, it was without choir, with three naves of almost equal height and vault to simply ceiling.

This tower is mentioned in a document of the Certosa di Pesio dated 21 February 1297 ("que appellatur turris Piparum") and probably was part of a huge system of medieval defense (together with forts placed on Castelvecchio, Moncalvino and Forfice) which granted protection to ancient foothill roads: the "via de Quarantam" that rose from Cuneo to Chiusa Pesio, and the "via Moretia" or "Morocenga" that led to Morozzo.

In fact, large boulders placed at its base show rock engravings (cups connected by canals present on a sloping surface, probably used for sacrificial purposes).

The current building was raised during the Baroque period and has a bell tower in neogothic style, built in 1930 on inspiration of the minarets of Rhodes, by the will of Mario Lago, citizen of Peveragno, at that time Governor of the Dodecanneso.

", and now corresponds to an ethnographic exhibition, handcrafts and enogastronomic of typical local products, with their exposition on the 1st Monday in December in the historic centre of Peveragno.