1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ceva
CEVA, a town of Piedmont, Italy, in the province of Cuneo, 33 m. E. by rail from the town of Cuneo, 1270 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 2703. In the middle ages it was a strong fortress defending the confines of Piedmont towards Liguria, but the fortifications on the rock above the town were demolished in 1800 by the French, to whom it had been ceded in 1796. Its cheese (caseus cebanus) was famous in Roman times, but it does not seem ever to have been a Roman town. It lay on the road between Augusta Taurinorum and Vada Sabatia. A branch railway runs from Ceva through Garessio, with its marble quarries, to Ormea (2398 ft.), 22 m. to the south through the upper valley of the Tanaro, which in Roman times was under Albingaunum (Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscr. Lat. v. (Berlin, 1877), p. 898). From Ormea a road runs south to (31 m.) Oneglia on the Ligurian coast.