The name says it all: Vettignè comes from vectigal, the toll paid for the right to pass through the village when this was the crossroads of the Via Svizzera and the Via Francigena. The castle was built there, perhaps over an older structure, in the fifteenth century, and for centuries belonged to the Vialardi di Verrone family, then to the Dal Pozzo; it finally passed to the Savoia-Aosta branch through the marriage of Maria Vittoria Carlotta, last heir of the princes della Cisterna, to Amedeo, duke of Aosta and king of Spain.
What to see
The castled core is ringed all round by swallow-tail merlons resting on long corbels with a decorative band. Above it stands the tall cylindrical tower, which closely recalls the one at the castle of San Genuario at Crescentino. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the dwellings, the storehouses and the manor house came to close the central courtyard; the complex was then enlarged from 1850 onwards.
Visiting
Do not expect a restored castle: since the depopulation of the hamlet began in 1960, the building has been in a state of almost total abandonment. That is what you will find, not a castle turned museum, and it still reads well, because the sequence of blocks around the courtyard tells the shift from toll fortress to noble farmstead.
Our editors' tip
Ask about Facino Cane. The most reliable sources have the condottiero born at Casale Monferrato, but the local legend makes him a native of Vettignè, and derives from that the claim that Vettignè and Santhià were the only places in the area spared his fury.