From outside it looks like a country villa, yet it is one of the oldest castles in the Aosta Valley: the eighteenth century turned it into a mansion and erased almost everything medieval. Until 1970 it held the archive of the Challant, one of the families that shaped the valley's history.
What to see
The block is compact and rectangular, with two towers projecting west and, to the east, the tower holding the guest rooms and the chapel. That is where the frescoes of 1502 are, commissioned by Filiberto di Challant for the baptism of his son Renato; on the arch there is also an image of the Holy Shroud, painted in 1678 for Giorgio di Challant-Châtillon to record the relic's halt here on its way from Chambéry to Turin. Inside, the library that once housed the archive keeps wooden ceilings and fifteenth-century frescoes, among them an interlaced palisade identical to the one in the courtyard of Fénis; the dining room is papered with Napoleonic scenes. The double-ramp staircase and the stuccoed hall of honour date from 1717, ordered by Paolina Solaro di Govone.
Visiting
The castle is private, lived in for part of the year, and closed to visitors. The park is not: three hectares terraced in the eighteenth century, two of them open in the warmer months since 1996 under an agreement between the owner and the regional government. The oldest plantings go back to Paolina Solaro di Govone, who replaced the trees felled by French troops; thirty-three trees of nine species are now listed as monumental.
Our editors' tip
Come for the park rather than the castle: go in summer and look down on the town, past the nineteenth-century stables built where the tower with the drawbridge winch once stood.
