A day in Casale Monferrato — the Monferrato capital: Duomo, synagogue, castle & Krumiri

Casale doesn't announce itself. You come in past car dealers and the river, and only when you're inside the old centre do the Baroque palazzi start, running down toward the Po the way they have since this was the seat of a marquisate. It was the capital when the Monferrato was a duchy, and it still walks around like one. Give it a day. You won't run out of things.

Morning: the Duomo, then the streets

Start at the Cattedrale di Sant'Evasio, the Romanesque cathedral that anchors the whole town. It goes back to the 12th century and honours a patron who was beheaded in the 4th, and the inside is stranger and better than the brick front lets on: striped pillars marching down the nave, a great crucifix over the main altar that Casale took back from Alessandria along with its stolen relics, side chapels to half the calendar of saints. There are steel art installations by the door now, which shouldn't work and somehow does. Go slow. This is a church people write home about.

From there just wander. The old centre is small and the good things are close together, so don't over-plan the walk between them.

Mid-morning: behind a plain door

The thing most people miss is on Vicolo Salomone Olper, in what used to be the ghetto. From the street the Synagogue and Jewish Museum is just a door. Behind it is one of the most lavish synagogues in Europe — inaugurated in 1595, then dressed over two centuries in gilded Piedmontese Baroque, carved wood and stucco and Hebrew running around the Holy Ark. Downstairs the Museo dei Lumi collects Hanukkah lamps; the old women's gallery holds the community silver. Only a couple of Jewish families are left in Casale now, so the doors open for guided visits and the holidays rather than on a whim — worth checking the times before you set out.

Coffee and a curved biscuit

You can't leave Casale without a Krumiro, and you may as well eat your first one where they'll tell you about it. At the Krumireria Antica Drogheria Corino 1764, near the piazza, order a cappuccino and the little curved cornmeal biscuit that Domenico Rossi is said to have shaped like the king's moustache in 1878. The owner's happy to explain the history while you eat, and a tin travels well as a gift. Prices run a touch high and Sundays can be slow, so it's a weekday-morning kind of stop. If you'd rather have a proper pastry, the croissants at Pasticceria Ninin are the best some visitors say they had in all of Italy — flaky in the French way, filled with Italian creams, the pistachio one especially. The coffee roast there runs bitter; go for the brioche.

Lunch: family table or medieval palazzo

Two ways to eat, both good. For the honest version, Osteria Amarotto cooks Piedmont the way a nonna does on a Sunday, in a 1940s room hung with old paintings, and the host greets you like family. Start with the raw beef and anchovies, have the bagna càuda if it's on, and don't skip the breadsticks — people come back for those alone. White truffle turns up in season. The antique market's a five-minute walk from the door.

If you want the occasion, Accademia Ristorante hides inside a medieval palazzo with painted ceilings and a staircase that belongs in a film. It's a tasting-menu kitchen — agnolotti, veal cheek that falls apart, a champagne list that surprises people this deep in Barbera country — and a four-course lunch can run past two hours, so book ahead and clear the afternoon. The entrance is tricky: look for the big gate on the street and the big steps up, and don't trust the address to be obvious.

Afternoon: the castle and the plaster casts

Walk off lunch at the Castello del Monferrato, the brick fortress of the Paleologi that anchors the centre. It's free, you can wander top to bottom, and there's a bistro, a bookshop and a wine bar tucked into the vaults below. Don't come for fixed castle history — there isn't much — come for the building itself and whatever exhibition is up. A market fills the piazza out front on Tuesdays and Fridays; if that's your day, park behind.

If you'd rather have art, the Museo Civico e Gipsoteca Bistolfi fills two dozen rooms of the old Augustinian convent of Santa Croce. The picture gallery is good, but the reason to go is the gipsoteca — the plaster casts of local sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi, which even people who shrug at provincial museums come out talking about. There's a QR audio guide, the staff know the collection cold, and it's about an hour and a half well spent. Note the hours: it's open Thursday to Sunday, closed the first half of the week, and admission's €8 (free on the Piedmont Museum Pass).

Wine to carry home

Casale's own wine is Grignolino — pale, faintly tannic, the local argument in a glass. Two family cellars will pour you some. Ermenegildo Leporati built their range around it: the Antica Chiesa Grignolino, a couple of Barbera del Monferrato, and a Pinot Nero and Chardonnay that are outliers for these hills. They'll open bottles if you come by, and the site runs in English, so your Italian doesn't need to be good. For a shop right in town, Riccardo Coppo keeps one on Piazza Castello, run by Riccardo's wife and daughter; the tastings proper happen in a cellar cut into pale Pietra da Cantoni out at Cella Monte, ten degrees cooler than the yard. Start with the Bonarda or the Grignolino.

If you can time it

Casale's calendar is worth planning around. The antiques market — 300-plus dealers across the Liberty-era Mercato Pavia and Piazza Castello — lands on the second Sunday of every month, 8am to 5pm, and it's one of Italy's biggest. In May the Golosaria weekend takes over the castle for "Barbera & Champagne" and street-food kitchens in the bastions. June brings three evenings of the Monfrà Jazz Fest under the concrete shell of the Paraboloide. And on 12 November the town closes ranks for the Festa di Sant'Evasio, a Pontificale in the cathedral and the blessing of the Galletti biscuits.

Before you drive off, buy the Krumiri. Then take the ridge road out to the hill villages and go looking for an Infernot — the hand-carved stone cellars of the Monferrato Casalese that UNESCO put on its list in 2014. Ten degrees cooler down there, and quiet.