The castle sits on the hill that commands Castellamonte, and the first documented record is from 1066, though the structure must already have been there in the preceding decades. It was the descendants of Arduin, marquis of Ivrea and later king of Italy, the counts of Castellamonte, who turned it into one of the most complex fortified structures of the Canavese: from the keep the curtain wall ran down towards the plain, encircling the whole hill as far as the road between Cuorgnè and Ivrea. Along that wall, where the seven gates still visible opened, the town grew, taking its name from the castle.
What to see
The original castle was destroyed during the tuchini revolt, and only in 1387 did Ibleto di Challant, sent by Amadeus VIII of Savoy, restore calm. The rebuilding dates from the early fifteenth century, and from that time survive the gate tower of the curtain wall, the entrance gate tower and the general layout, with four buildings arranged around the access road. Further devastation came in 1552, with marshal de Brissac's incursion into the Canavese.
Visiting
Today the complex consists of four buildings. To the north the two oldest; to the south the two rebuilt later, entered through a baroque portal that opens onto a large garden courtyard ringed by a balustrade in local terracotta, from which you see the plain from Agliè to Superga. The white palace has a seventeenth-century layout and is attributed to Amedeo di Castellamonte, architect to the House of Savoy, born here; the family chapel is his as well. The red tower, on the other hand, was transformed in the mid nineteenth century by the architect Luigi Formento into a neo-Gothic villa with terracotta work and Ghibelline merlons.
Our editors' tip
One figure explains how this fief worked better than any family tree: the county was divided into 271 points of jurisdiction, which the various branches of the family exercised on a three-year rotation. To tell themselves apart the branches had taken nicknames: Cagnis, Cognengo, Aimone, Della Porta, Merlo, Vercellino. From the Cognengo branch came Carlo and Amedeo di Castellamonte, both court architects.