For more than a thousand years one family, the Valperga di Masino, held this castle in the Canavese hills, handing it down without interruption from 942 until 1988. It passed then to the FAI with its collections intact, set within a large English-style landscape park.
At a glance
The Castello di Masino stands on a low moraine hill in the Canavese, the district of Piemonte between the Po plain and the Alps of the Valle d’Aosta. It is considered the best-preserved medieval castle of the area, built up over centuries by the Valperga di Masino family and passed to the Fondo Ambiente Italiano in 1988. Four cylindrical corner towers mark its silhouette, the oldest dating to the fourteenth century and the tallest reaching some 28 metres.
The castle sits within a 350-hectare park laid out in the English landscape style at the end of the eighteenth century, planted with oak and chestnut woodland typical of the Canavese hills.
Key facts
- Owners: the Valperga di Masino family, documented from 942 to 1988, the longest recorded continuous single-family ownership of a castle in Piemonte
- Current custodian: Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI), since 1988
- Towers: four cylindrical corner towers, including the fourteenth-century Torre Sud-Est and the eighteenth-century Torre dell’Orologio
- Park: 350 hectares of English-style landscaped grounds with an avenue of some 120 linden trees
- Collection: Flemish tapestries, Chinese export porcelain, family portraits and armour, catalogued by the FAI after 1988
History
The earliest record of the site is a charter of 942, naming a ‘castellum Maxini’ held by a Count Arderic de Valperga, an ancestor of the Valperga di Masino; the document is preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Torino. The original stronghold was a single square tower on the hill controlling the road between Ivrea and Chivasso, one of the main east-west routes of the Canavese, and it served as a toll point as well as a refuge.
Over the following centuries, funded in part by tolls the family collected on crossings of the Po, the single tower grew into the four-towered courtyard castle that survives today, a process completed by around the mid-sixteenth century.
Carlo Emanuele Valperga di Masino, the last heir of the family, died in 1988 without direct descendants. Under his will the castle, its contents and the surrounding park passed to the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, which restored the property and opened it to the public in 1992.
What you see
The exterior is dominated by the four corner towers, the oldest built in brick with courses of local stone known as pietra di Castellamonte, the youngest carrying a clock face reproduced by the FAI after an eighteenth-century original by Berthoud. Inside, some eighteen rooms are open to visitors, beginning with the entrance hall and its sixteenth-century stone staircase, fitted with a wrought-iron banister forged in a single piece in the late seventeenth century.
The Sala delle Armi houses the castle’s most notable holdings: a set of Flemish tapestries woven in Brussels in the late seventeenth century, depicting episodes from the life of Alexander the Great, displayed alongside a collection of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century armour. The Sala del Biliardo preserves a large collection of Chinese export porcelain from the eighteenth century, arranged as it was originally assembled.
Outside, the English-style park laid out at the end of the eighteenth century includes a long avenue of linden trees planted around 1790, now grown tall enough to form a shaded green corridor in summer.
Practical information
- Opening: the castle operates seasonal FAI opening days and times; check the official FAI website before visiting
- Tickets: admission and any FAI membership discounts are set by the FAI and should be confirmed on its official channels
- Visit length: a visit to the castle and park takes roughly two to two and a half hours
Getting there
The castle lies in Caravino, in the province of Torino. It can be reached by rail to Rivarolo Canavese followed by a short onward journey, or by road via the A5 motorway, leaving at the Scarmagno exit.
Nearby
- Sacro Monte di Belmonte — about 7 km away, a group of chapels on a moraine hill of the Canavese, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003 as part of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy
- Castello e Parco di Agliè — about 8 km away, a former summer residence of the House of Savoy dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Sources
- FAI Fondo Ambiente Italiano
- Archivio di Stato di Torino
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