Of the seat of the Del Carretto, lords of Finale, what still stands and repays the climb is one piece of wall: the Torre dei Diamanti, shaped like a ship's keel and faced entirely with diamond-point rustication. The castle began far earlier, at the end of the 12th century, probably from 1172, when Enrico I del Carretto or his son Enrico II set a caminata, a feudal palace, on the Becchignolo hill above Finalborgo, capital of the marquisate; Enrico II enlarged and fortified it in 1217. Partly demolished by the Republic of Genoa in 1448, it was rebuilt at once by Giovanni I Del Carretto between 1451 and 1452.
What to see
The Torre dei Diamanti is the tip of a triangular block added around 1490 by Alfonso I Del Carretto: its job was to take artillery fire from the seaward slope, and it is a textbook case of what historians call transitional military architecture, halfway between the medieval castle and the modern bastion. The design looks to Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whom Alfonso is thought to have met in Rome and perhaps in Milan. The same diamond-point facing that in those years dressed city palaces, in Ferrara for one, is here wrapped around a work of defence.
The rest is a fortification system that grew for two centuries. In the second or third decade of the 16th century the outer rectangular wall was begun, finished in the last years of Del Carretto rule, before 1558. Under Spanish rule the effort moved outward: in 1643 Castel San Giovanni went up to hold the slope below Gavone and deny it to enemy guns, and in 1674 the engineer Gaspare Beretta had a rocky shelf on the north side cut away so besiegers could not dig in there, adding a traverse, a salient and a covered way at the foot of the wall. In 1715, having bought the marquisate, Genoa sent sappers and blew the place up.
Visiting
The ruins are at the hamlet of Perti, above Finalborgo: from the walled town a footpath takes you up in a short climb, and that is the right way to arrive, because the castle grows over your head as you go. On 29 December 1989 the complex was given to the town of Finale Ligure, which began the works that conserve it and open it to visitors; opening times change with the season, so check before you set off. Wear closed shoes: the ground is rocky and uneven.
Our editors' tip
We suggest going up in the late afternoon: raking light picks out the blocks of the Torre dei Diamanti one by one, whereas at midday they read flat. One thing to look up beforehand: until 1998 Castel Gavone appeared on the Italian castle stamp series. As for the name, neither the signs nor whoever corrects you is wrong. Gavone and Govone are both recorded in 14th-century documents, and Govone prevailed until the end of the Spanish period.