Castle of Montemagno (or of Counts Calvi di Bergolo) | Castello di Montemagno (o dei Conti Calvi di Bergolo)

Address Via Conte Calvi, 90, 14030 Montemagno Monferrato AT, Italia

Highlights

The medieval castle is perched on the original fortified core and was remodeled between the 13th and 14th centuries.

Viewed from the outside, the castle clearly reveals the oldest structures and subsequent reconstruction works.

The scarp walls, in some places very high to accommodate the rise of the ground on which the building rests, are, for the most part, what remains of the primitive castle that must have been a fortress rather than a stately residence.

Then came the partial reconstruction at the beginning of the fourteenth century, signs are the beautiful-arched windows, with the polychrome circle, in alternating terracotta and tuff, according to Asti custom, and the very rich and wide crown band, which is repeated even at the top of the towers, in which a round of hanging arches and more chequered stripes predominate, and the other carefully executed terracotta friezes, with foliage and tendrils, and part of the battlements, swallow-tailed.

Eighteenth-century architects opened rectangular windows, built balconies, remade, imitating, what had collapsed, and arranged the interior.

Beyond the drawbridge, which overlooks a deep moat, we are in the atrium and the eighteenth-century perspective that presents itself, not without its strength and elegance, leaves a little interdicted, since the view of the outside had projected us into an environment very different, more masculine, more severe.

Lodovico Vergano recalls in his visit to the castle that passing through the halls, the salons, the rooms that follow one another in remarkable numbers, the sight of the precious furniture, different in styles, paintings of various periods, rare objects, prints, frescoes on the walls and vaults, some by Pasqualini, restores the soul to serenity.