The Bellone Park

The Municipality of Biella is collaborating with weTree and Lions Bugella Civitas
in the requalification of the Bellone Park

 

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022, starting at 6 p.m., a ceremony was held to inaugurate Biella’s requalified Bellone Park, one of the local citizens’ most beloved green lungs.

 

Thanks to the collaboration between the Municipality of Biella, the weTree Association and the Biella Bugella Civitas Lions, which implemented the different stages of the project, works for the cleanup, landscaping and restoration of the main trail were carried out in the park located below the historic village of Piazzo.

 

The refurbished promenade was named, as proposed by the Biella Bugella Civitas Lions Club, in memory of Lidia Lanza (1916- 2003), a member the Biella City Council for 42 years and creator of the city’s welfare services: from crèches to home care for senior citizens, from meeting centers to seaside stays for the elderly, Lidia Lanza devoted all her time and expertise to the realization of Services for Individuals.
 

The inauguration was attended by Claudio Corradino, Mayor of the City of Biella, Isabella Scaramuzzi, Councillor for Social Services, Nicoletta Ramella Pezza, President of the Biella Bugella Civitas Lions, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, President of the weTree Association and members of Lidia Lanza’s family.

 

The Biella Bugella Civitas Lions Club planted an oak tree in memory of Lidia Lanza, together with a panel illustrating her work, while the “Far Pensare Emanuele Lomonaco” Association planted a ginkgo biloba tree in memory of Covid victims, a dutiful tribute paid also by other municipalities in the Province of Biella, thus promoting the creation of a widespread woodland.

 

The ceremony was preceded at 4 p.m. by a children’s workshop by Laborarte for the Clelio Angelino Foundation, which works in the Biella area to promote medical research in the fight against leukemia, for the treatment and care of hemato-oncological patients and adopting interventions also in favor of children who will be involved in the Bellone project, such as targeted activities in contact with nature.

 

The Bellone Park is a peri-urban promenade that stretches out beneath the spurs of the historic village of Piazzo, the first settlement of the city of Biella. Mostly flat, with groves of alders, maples and hornbeams, it alternates between grassland and wetlands, bordering the Bellone river.

Dedicated to

  • LIDIA LANZA 1916 - 2003   Growing up in the milieu of the Catholic Action lay association (Azione Cattolica) in the 1930s and 1940s, she matured her vocation for civic engagement and a strong, socially characterized vision of democracy.   A leading exponent of Biella's democratic Catholicism, she was Councillor for Social Services since the early 1950s: it is thanks to Lidia Lanza that a model of local welfare was created, that has been an excellence of the City of Biella for decades.   Crèches, canteens and income support for the underprivileged, housing for older persons in need, organization of meeting centers and seaside stays for the elderly, are just some of the Services for Individuals that, thanks to Lidia Lanza’s work, have accompanied the growth of Biella in the years of its greatest development and which addressed the problems posed by internal immigration and the industrial transformation of our country.   Appointed as the first president of the Local Health Unit (U.S.L.) after the reform of the national health system, Lidia Lanza was certainly the greatest female protagonist of Biella's political and administrative history from the postwar period to the present.