Casale valle San Bartolomeo Alessandria

This is the flat Tanaro plain around Alessandria, with intensive farmland, roads, rail lines and scattered industrial areas. The Tanaro runs through the city and the Bormida joins it nearby. Alessandria is the nearest town of size and has the full services of a provincial capital, a substantial historic centre and a rail junction. The Monferrato hills begin outside the plain but they are not the immediate landscape here. As the cluster is inside the built-up area of a city above 50,000 residents, the urban cap applies.