Description : Bene Vagienna is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Cuneo in the Italian region Piedmont, located about 60 kilometres (37 mi) south of Turin and about 30 kilometres (19 mi) northeast of Cuneo. The ancient town known to the Romans as Augusta Bagiennorum, believed to have been the capital of the Ligurian tribe of the Bagienni, was located in the frazione Roncaglia. Founded by ancient Ligurian populations of the territory, the Bagienni (or Vagienni), then mixed with the Roman- Augustan dominion of the II - I century BC in Piedmont , called colonia- oppidum called Augusta Bagiennorum or, by transliteration, also Vagiennorum . The first urban nucleus was astronomically oriented according to solstices and equinoxes , thus following the geographical lines of terrestrial latitude and longitude . Together with other nearby agglomerations, such asPollentia ( Pollenzo ) or Alba Pompeia ( Alba ), Bagienna soon became a point of reference for the life of the ancient Piedmontese Roman provinces; the archaeological area preserves the remains of a Roman city forum, a theater and an amphitheater. Most of the old Roman city was destroyed following alternating battles, and in the 6th century a new village was built to the north-east, at the point where the Mondalavia streams and the Cucetta stream, both tributaries of the Tanaro, meet . The toponym Bagienna , or Vagienna , first contracted in Bagienne and then Baenne , was simply transformed into Bene (perhaps also for a good omen), as was already attested in some documents of the ninth century ; the new urban nucleus prospered so much that in 901, when the emperor Ludovico III assigned it in temporal possession to the bishop of Asti , the town was equipped with an imperial court and an autonomous Pieve (parish), with a vast territory (about 7,500 hectares), greatly reduced in the following centuries.
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