Queen Margherita of Savoy loved mountains in earnest: she walked up them, slept in refuges, and in 1893 had a hut inaugurated on a summit of Monte Rosa above four thousand five hundred metres, which still bears her name. From 1889 she spent her summers at Gressoney, as the guest of a baron of the valley; then she decided she wanted a house of her own, with a view of the Rosa, and got it although her husband preferred to go hunting elsewhere. Castel Savoia was built for her between the end of the nineteenth century and 1904.
What to see
The castle is a medieval fake, and it does not hide the fact: five turrets all different from one another, pointed roofs, wooden galleries, like the houses in children's picture books. It was designed by Emilio Stramucci, the architect the Savoys used to do up their residences, and it stands at almost fifteen hundred metres, set against the slope below the Ranzola pass.
Inside you visit the queen's rooms, with their pale wooden panelling, the staircase, the stoves and the furnishings put back as they were; the whole is more intimate than the word castle suggests, because it was a holiday house, not a palace. Outside, the alpine botanical garden gathers hundreds of high-altitude species along a path that takes twenty minutes.
Visiting
The castle is at Gressoney-Saint-Jean, at the head of the Lys valley, some forty kilometres from the motorway; it is visited with a ticket and guided tours at fixed times, with seasonal opening and closure in some low-season months: check before driving up. An hour, an hour and a half with the garden, open only in summer.
Our editors' tip
Go on a clear morning and, before going in, walk round behind the castle to look at the valley: the snowy peaks at the far end are those of Monte Rosa, and it is for that view that the house was built exactly there and not three hundred metres further along. And if you happen to see a photograph of the hut on the summit, remember that a nineteenth-century lady in a long skirt walked up to it.