LOCATION

Rorà is an Italian municipality of 221 inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Turin in Piedmont.

The story of Rorà is that of all the mountain villages in Piedmont: once a fiefdom of a noble family, namely the Luserna, it later became a free community (in the 17th century it was known as the Magnificent Community of Rorata).

The history of Rorà is also characterized (as are several surrounding municipalities, forming part of the so-called “Waldensian valleys”) by the presence of the Waldensians, a religious movement born in the 12th century in Lyon (and still existing today) from the story of Valdo, a wealthy French merchant who one day decided to abandon all his possessions to follow the teachings of Christ. His movement, similar in some ways to that of Francis of Assisi, although unlike his, was excommunicated by the Roman Church.

In the 16th century, the Waldensians adhered to the Protestant Reformation, organizing their communities along Calvinist lines and facing opposition from their sovereign. They were thus victims of legal discrimination, imprisonment, violence, and the risk of extinction. In 1655, troops invaded the Waldensian valleys, and Rorà was defended by Joshua Gianavello and his men. In 1686, there was a new persecution; many were deported and imprisoned or exiled to Switzerland, but returned three years later in what became known as the Glorious Return. Civil and political rights were only recognized on February 17, 1848.

As a mountain municipality, Rorà has been affected by the phenomenon of emigration in the second half of the 19th century (especially towards France and South America, founding the Argentine town of Alejandra, twinned with the Municipality), and consequently by depopulation. However, unlike other municipalities, it was able to supplement a poor agricultural economy with a more profitable industrial activity, until the 19th century with lime production, and later with the processing of Luserna Stone.

Another important historical moment for the village of Rorà was during the Resistance, hence during the Second World War when the entire population showed solidarity not only towards the partisans but also towards the Jews who had found refuge in the village with some local families. After the major bombings in Turin in 1942, many Turin families of Jewish origin evacuated to Val Pellice, first to Luserna and then to Rorà, where between 1943 and 1945, five families lived secretly under false identities: De Benedetti, Levi, Amar, Bachi, and Terracini. In total, there were 21 refugees who were saved, a considerable number considering that the entire population of Rorà was about 200 people. Many testimonies from that period have reached us; for example, that of Roberto Terracini, a sculptor from Turin, who, along with his wife and daughter, found refuge for rent at the Vernarea farmhouse, whose owning family, Pavarin, left them the bedroom and settled in the barn. During his clandestine refuge in Rorà, Roberto Terracini secretly made many drawings of daily and partisan life, all signed Ferraguti, the surname with which he covered his true identity.