One sunny summer afternoon, a group of tourists arrive in Garbagna, a small village of just over 700 inhabitants, capital of Val Grue, in the province of Alessandria, some twenty kilometres from Tortona. They enthusiastically discover its medieval urban layout, the district and its flowers, the square with its four centuries-old horse chestnuts, the colourful facades of the houses - all beauties that justified its inclusion in 2015 in the association Borghi più belli d'Italia (The most beautiful villages in Italy). After this pleasant discovery, questions arise. We are in Piemonte, so why this mixture with Liguria, which can be read in the town planning and toponymy? Why Palazzo Doria and Palazzo Fieschi? And why, in numerous restaurants, do pasta al pesto and cima alternate with ravioli and roasts? There is a need for an answer that cannot be summed up in a few words and that finds its explanations in Garbagna's more than millennial past, when bishops and knights of fortune, Fieschi and Doria, dukes of Milano and emperors of Germany, Savoy and Napoleon, caught up in their great power games, also influenced the life of a small but strategic village, between Liguria and Piemonte.