"Arcadia Alpina" is a novel written by Cavalier Enrico Faure of Sauze d'Oulx, published in 1906.
The reissue of "Arcadia Alpina" in the Cahier dell'ecomuseo Colombano Romean series is an opportunity to discover a forgotten peasant world that characterized the Upper valley of the Dora river between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In Faure's work, we find described the fieldwork, the tools, the life of a community in its daily evolution, the folk traditions, beliefs, superstitions, religious rituals with their syncretisms, and sometimes we cannot help but smile at the naivety of the characters that reflects the simplicity and cruelty of that harsh peasant world, but at the same time, we cannot help but be moved and sometimes touched by the description of that rural landscape, that Arcadia so skillfully evoked and described as experienced firsthand by the author. These are the words of Renato Sibille who edited the reissue and gave new life to the work with his comments, a rich glossary of less common, antiquated, obsolete words, dialects, or particular meanings given by Faure, and the complete biography of Professor Faure reconstructed through the documents consulted in the historical archives of the Municipalities of Oulx and Sauze d'Oulx, the joint school college of Oulx, the Parish of San Giovanni Battista of Sauze d'Oulx, and the Diocese of Susa, in addition to information drawn from local periodicals of the time and various publications.