Mount Musinè, the mountain of legends in the Susa Valley

At the mouth of the Susa Valley, a few kilometres from Turin, rises a bare, rounded mountain about 1,150 metres high. This is Mount Musinè, which overlooks the villages of Caselette, Almese and Val della Torre. Few heights in the western Alps have gathered so many legends: imperial visions, royal burials, mysterious lights. To find our way among these tales it is worth distinguishing what belongs to history, what is local tradition and what is recent suggestion.

Constantine's vision

The oldest and most deeply rooted tradition links the Musinè to the emperor Constantine. In 312, during the campaign against Maxentius, Constantine's army came down into Italy from Gaul, took Susa and defeated the opposing troops near Turin before marching on Rome. The ancient sources, Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea, relate that the emperor received a divine sign before the decisive battle, without, however, placing it on the Musinè.

Eusebius reports that a luminous cross appeared to Constantine with the inscription that Latin writers rendered as «In hoc signo vinces», in this sign you will conquer. The ancient account ties the portent to the eve of the clash at the Milvian Bridge. It is local tradition, born in a later age, that claims the vision took place right above the Musinè, as the army passed through the valley. This is a devotion, not a verifiable historical fact.

The cross and the tomb of Herod

The link with Constantine explains the great cross standing on the summit, raised in 1901 at the dawn of the new century and visible from much of the plain. Alongside this Christian memory survives a stranger tale: according to a local legend, Herod, the ruler of the Gospels, is buried on the mountain. The story perhaps arises from the report, handed down by Flavius Josephus, of the exile in Gaul of Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great.

The ancient sources give Lugdunum as the place of exile, a name usually identified with Lyon, and nothing connects Antipas with the Piedmontese valleys. The legend of the burial on the Musinè should therefore be considered a popular creation, which sought to give the mountain an unsettling guest and turn it into the dark counterpart of Constantine's cross.

Carvings, lightning and lights

On the mountain's slopes and in the surrounding areas there are rocks bearing cup-marks and engravings, circular hollows cut by human hands at periods that are hard to pin down. Such marks are found throughout the Alpine arc, and their ritual meaning is still debated among scholars. Their presence has fed the idea that the Musinè was a sacred place since prehistory.

In the later twentieth century a new mythology was added: tales of lights in the sky, alleged sightings of flying objects and unexplained magnetic phenomena. The shape of the mountain, often struck by lightning and prone to fires, encouraged these narratives. This is contemporary folklore, interesting for the study of modern beliefs, but lacking any scientific confirmation.

Mount Musinè thus sums up, in a single mountain, several layers of the imagination: Constantinian devotion, an inverted biblical legend, the prehistoric sacredness of carved rocks and the technological myth of our own day. Climbing to the summit cross, with a view over the Turin plain, helps us understand why this isolated height has always struck the imagination of those who watched it from afar.