The castello dei Laghi was built around 1860 for Victor Emmanuel II, inside what is now the La Mandria nature park. It stands at the centre of three artificial lakes, Cristoforo, della Strada and Grande, which give it its name and which made it an excellent position for fishing and for shooting migratory birds.
What to see
It has the air of a castle, not the substance: it mixes different styles with the eclecticism typical of the second half of the nineteenth century and looks to the French châteaux, with a Y-shaped plan and a partly hidden front. The original appearance had four towers, two of them crenellated; then came the two wings that project from the central body.
Visiting
The wings and the new gardens are the work of the Bonomi Bolchini family, who bought the complex a hundred years after it was built, in a sale promoted by the marquis Luigi Medici del Vascello, great-grandson of the Garibaldian Giacomo Medici. The large gardens were redesigned by Pietro Porcinai. Since 1995 the property has belonged to the Piedmont Region.
Our editors' tip
If you feel you have seen it before, you may well have: in 2012 the castle hosted the live television broadcast of Rossini's Cenerentola, and in 2019 it was the main location for Roberto De Feo's film The Nest. It is worth arriving from the side of the lakes, which are the reason the castle stands where it does.
