In 1723 André De Pléod was sentenced to death for offence against divine majesty: he had tried to kill his wife by means of magic. His family lost the castle with him, a house standing at 700 metres among the vineyards and orchards of Sorreley, on the hillside of Saint-Christophe.
What to see
The two souls of the building are easy to tell apart: the oldest piece is the round tower on the south side, where the family chapel stood, and the west front keeps a typically Valdostan look; the rest was added by the Sorreley after a fire, with no regard for the earlier style. The nineteenth century raised the western tower, blocked the glazing of the first-floor gallery and added the two staircases, with the northern one and the entrance arch designed by Carlo Ceppi; the park was replanned in the same years with new paths and a stand of firs. Inside, still lived in, the castle keeps a collection of pewter and Valdostan walnut furniture.
Visiting
It is private and closed to visitors: you look at it from the road through the vines, a kilometre from the Jocteau castle. The site is older than the house, since a Roman villa stood here when Augusta Praetoria was founded. The castle, probably fourteenth-century, belonged to the lordship of Quart; it passed to the Sorreley, ennobled in 1570 and soon extinct, helped by the plague of 1630, and in 1814 to the Passerin d'Entrèves, who hold it still.
Our editors' tip
In 1940 the prefecture of Aosta took it over, and after the Liberation the Allies requisitioned the east wing for South African officers awaiting repatriation: a detail that tells you how the war passed through here better than most guidebooks.