Belforte all'Isauro

The castle of Belforte is Lombard in origin, but the shape it has today was given to it by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who rebuilt it at the wish of Federico da Montefeltro. In 1271 Belforte was one of the hundred castles of the Massa Trabaria, the ones that kept the Papal State standing in these parts. In the fourteen hundreds, during the long war between the Montefeltro and the Malatesta, Federico was gravely wounded fighting for this very castle, at a place called Campo.

The castle, however, carries someone else's name: in 1874 it was bought by baron Hermann De Tenneret, baron of Beaufort, who was convinced it had once belonged to his own ancestors; and then he gave it to the municipality. Belforte had become a municipality of its own a few years before, in 1872, with the hamlets of Toriola and Campo. At Campo there is a church dedicated to the Madonna della Neve, Our Lady of the Snow, and the name comes from a snowfall that came down in the middle of August.