The castle of Bardassano stands in the hamlet of the same name in Gassino Torinese, eighteen kilometres from Turin. It was built in the eleventh century and is exceptionally well preserved. It served as a Chieri bulwark against the encroachments of Montferrat, and under the rule of the Republic of Chieri it probably also served as a prison.
What to see
The main core is a massive brick building with round corner towers and the keep flush with the curtain wall; at a later stage a block without towers was added against it, projecting beyond the older core, and that is the difference you notice at once as you walk round. The most substantial restorations date from the seventeenth century and turned part of the outer fortifications into terraced gardens: from there a marble stairway leads to a courtyard of Renaissance taste.
Visiting
On the ground floor are halls with wooden decoration and paintings from the same period as the terraces. A more recent restoration was directed by Carlo Nigra, one of the names that in the twentieth century put half of fortified Piedmont back on its feet. The castle is out in the hamlet and is looked at from outside, except on special openings.
Our editors' tip
Look towards the rise opposite and the logic of the place becomes clear: there stood the castle of Tortondenito, known as the Castellone, destroyed at the end of the fourteenth century by Montferrat troops led by Facino Cane. They were two fortresses facing each other on a contested border. Local tradition holds that Bardassano was already here at the time of Barbarossa's siege of Chieri, and that the emperor stayed in it after the town's destruction in 1156.