For a while they called it the tower of the Poor: it had passed to the parish of Saint-Laurent in Aosta, which assigned its income to the poor fund. Before that it belonged to the lords of Villa au Gressan, who had it built around 1191 and were among the oldest noble families of the Aosta Valley, present here before the year 1000.
What to see
Two bodies stand out: the square twelfth-century tower, in tuff blocks and granite ashlars, and the semicircular residential wing added in the fifteenth century over three floors. The tower has no windows, only arrow slits; the original door, on the north side, opens seven metres above the ground and was reached by a double removable wooden stair. Above it the corbels survive that carried the beam of a wooden hoarding, and the top ends in a lead platform roof that works as a belvedere over the plain. Inside are the reception hall, a chapel frescoed by the Artari and a hall of arms with the blazons of the Savoy and the Valdostan noble families, as in the courtyard of Issogne.
Visiting
Reduced to a ruin and then restored, the castle was bought in 1885 by the bishop of Aosta, Joseph-Auguste Duc, who made it his summer residence and handled it heavily: he pulled down part of the wall to replace it with a crenellated parapet and opened a door at street level. Since 1945 it has belonged to the Arruga family; until 2011 it was lived in and closed to the public, and it now works as a hospitality venue hosting temporary exhibitions.
Our editors' tip
It stands among apple orchards and vines along the Gressan regional road, and it is best reached on foot: five minutes downhill is the tower of La Plantaz, and to the east the church of the Madeleine, its facade frescoed in 1453.