Oasi Zegna with the spectacular flowering of Conca di Rododendri is one of the most fascinating trips you can make in spring Piedmont. The perfect destination for an open-air day along the Zegna Overview, one of the most beautiful streets in Italy, which winds for 26 kilometers above Trivero, in Biellese, unveiling curves after curves enchanting landscapes and blooms at eye loss.
Beyond the Conca di RododendriIn fact, the Overview Zegna Continue towards the locality Biel, up to meadows exterminatedthe narcissi that you alternate with unforgettable views of Monte Rosa on one side and the Po Valley on the other. Even today the best way to visit the Oasi Zegna is to travel the Road Overview Zegna: a journey in nature and time, just under the sky.
Index of Article
Oasi Zegna what to see: the flowering of the Conca dei Rododendri
The first stage is atOasis Zegna to admire the spectacular flowering of Conca di Rododendri, which in this period literally leaves stupefied for the incredible color palette that regenerates body and spirit. Until mid-June, Conca flourishes with an exciting color palette: the rhododendrons from Belgium, especially in the Ponticum (fuchsia) and Hibridies variant, offer an unforgettable view.
An explosion of whites first up to red, pink, and purple; an eye blow that remains imprinted. This year, in order to take it fully in complete safety, a unique sense of walking through the paths has been prepared. Along with the blooms, stand out the site specific works of the project Open created by international artists scattered in areas of the territory with installations accessible to all.
A fairytale garden in the mountains, the Conca dei Rododendri dell’Oasi Zegna is a landscape project designed and funded by the Biella industry Ermenegildo Zegna, implemented in the 1950s by the architect Pietro Porcinai, more recently expanded from Paolo Pejrone. Here nature gives show every spring with an explosion of rhododendron of different colors considered "more beautiful flowering in Italy" that every year, in May, make this small valley that meets the fourth bend of the Overview Zegna the most visited attraction of the Oasis.
The views of the Oasi Zegna
Those who choose the Oasi Zegna look for wide open spaces, nature in all its wonderful aspects, beautiful views and embrace of greenery, blooms with a loss of eye, simple things. If you also want to taste the flavors of the territory, there are numerous operators who offer takeaway dishes to be consumed safely and picnic baskets for excursions away from the crowd.
Continuing along the road, Overview Zegna It offers wonderful visions: on the one hand, on Monte Rosa, on the Alta Valsessera and the slopes of Valsesia, on the other on the Po Valley. Orientation is not a problem: the whole street is scattered with panoramic points with information signs indicating the names of peaks. From time to time, it is worth leaving the car to reach special places.
How Sanctuary of San Bernardo, at the top of the homonymous mountain, to be conquered on foot from Pumpkin of Stavello: a little more than 1400 meters of altitude, it seems to be on the roof of the world, with the look that ranges 360° from the Ligurian Apennines to the Alps, to the Po Valley.
Or the Bocchetta di Margosio, for the unique view of the imposing mass of Monte Rosa with its 24 tips over 4 thousand. A unique panorama that you can enjoy comfortably sitting at the kiosk of the Alpe Margosio mountain hut, a cell of the Biella ecomuseo that produces excellent goat cheese.
Biel
Build a ski resort with the Zegna Overview from scratch. Create the "Bellesi mountain", a place where children can ski. This is the dream Ermenegildo Zegna, the origin of Bielmonte. A dream that took place in 1957, when two plants came into operation.
The Monte Marca chairlift and the Buca di Forno ski lift. The works started in 1950, when the construction site of the Zegna Overview reached the highest altitude, Monte Marca: on those slopes overlooking the Padana Plain and Monte Rosa, renamed in Bielmonte, Count Zegna called architects, among which Luigi Vietti, to build non-invasive tourist structures. Seven years later, the "montagna che non c’era" saw the slopes crowded with skiers.
Alta Valsessera
It iswildest area of Oasi Zegna, inhabited by deer, roe deer (and by the rare dove protected Carabus olympiae), travelled by hiking and mountain biking trails leading to alpine pastures, scenic spots, archeo-metallurgical sites. It is accessed through the "boxes", the mountain valleys once crossed during the transhumance, who meet along the Zegna Overview in its highest section.
Among the 26 nature itineraries of Oasi Zegna, the vast part goes on in the Alta Valsessera: from the path of Smile Forest, ideal for families, with signs that tell the beneficial effects of plants on human health – to more challenging routes such as that on the footprints of Fra Dolcino. Among the beech treesAlta Valsessera the paths of Forest Bathing, traced by the echo designer Marco Nieri and inspired by the ancient Japanese practice "Shinrin-yoku" that exploits the therapeutic power of the trees. 
La Valle Cervo
From Bocchetto Sessera the Zegna Overview descends towards this valley, giving new suggestions. The landscape changes: it becomes more harsh and epic. Modeled by the glaciers and the stream from which it takes its name, the Cervo Valley is the only one of Biellese with Alpine characteristics. A harsh and grey mountain like the particular magmatic rocks that characterize it, including the sienite. To visit the village of Rosazza, for its architectures and the mystery halo linked to the presence of esoteric and Masonic symbols.
History of Overview Zegna
The Zegna Overview is a road that alone is worth the trip, and not only for the breathtaking views of Monte Rosa and the Alta Valsessera or for the natural beauty of the territory that travels with its 26 km, from Trivero to Valle Cervo. But also for its history: unique (it was among the very first roads built for tourist purposes) and at the origin in 1993 of the first example of environmental patronage in Italy, Oasi Zegna, as also recognized by the Italian Environment Fund in 2014.
An extraordinary work of landscape enhancement realized, from the 1930s, by the textile entrepreneur Ermenegildo Zegna that in the context of a wider environmental project, wanted in the vicinity of the homonymous Lanificio services, like a school, a cinema, a hospital, a pool, hotels, restaurants and much more.
An "environmental patronage" ante litteram, able to create a democratic beauty, accessible to anyone. He built a 26 km long road – still today Overview Zegna – to connect cities with the "highlands", planted 500 thousand conifers, as well as several hundred rhododendrons and hydrangeas.
Ermenegildo Zegna, after building in 1910 in Trivero the homonymous Lanificio and important social works (which included a hospital, recreation centers, a cinema, a pool and so on), turned to the mountain and put in place, starting from from 1938, his desire to make it accessible and alive for all.
The environmental project Ermenegildo Zegna
The project was a link between the Valsesia and the Valle d’Aosta, i.e. from the lakes to France and Switzerland, all in altitude. But the route of the Zegna Overview was to transform the perception of the mountain, between fruition, protection and development of the local economy.
Ermenegildo Zegna defined the landscape by enhancing the environment without altering its characteristics (the Valsessera has remained intact and has been recognized as S.I.C. Site of Community Interest), and giving the possibility, thanks to the tapestry on the Plain on one side and on the Sessera Valley on the other and to the accesses that the Zegna Overview guarantees to both environments, of a "easy" use to the mountain and its most suggestive places.
Accessibility and services but also great attention and care; Ermenegildo Zegna strengthened the hydrogeological defenses with the planting of over 500,000 conifers and increased the aesthetic value: from the first hairpins above Trivero the slopes are like a garden thanks to the abode of hundreds of rhododendrons, azalee, ortensie.
The complete itinerary
The central part of the itinerary has a more natural footprint, with largely spontaneous vegetation and the extraordinary cliffs on Pianura and ValSessera: from 1938 to 1952 the viario thread stretched over the slopes to the foot of Monte Marca (1.615 meters above sea level), where from 1957 the ski resort of Bielmonte is active.
In less than 20 years Count Zegna has created a great work: not a simple road path, but a vital system, woven with paths, poggi, affacci (spectacular those of the mouths of Margosio and Luvera), of recreational facilities and accommodation, like the inn of Caulera or the buddrome of the Stavello. Ermenegildo Zegna didn't want his way to stop.
Thus, after his death (1966), the Overview Zegna he continued his "third part" coming down towards the Cervo Valley (which still retains the most genuine aspects of mountain life and local traditions) and then from the suggestive Sanctuary of Oropa to Andrate.
A grandiose enterprise in itself (considering the times and the enormous difficulties to face in the construction of a mountain road) which also marked the beginning of a broad plan of valorisation of the territory and environmental protection, launched in recent times (1993) in the creation of theOasis Zegna but already clearly outlined in the "green thought" of Ermenegildo Zegna in the 1930s.
