Castello Scarampi

The medieval castle was destroyed in 1305 and subsequently rebuilt.

The castle now houses three guest rooms in the Guesthouse with bed and breakfast services.

• Availability: private property | not open to visitors.

• Origin

A document from 1161 speaks of the castle that stood at the peak of the Bricco di San Giovanni, describing it as a building with the most modern defenses of the time.

• Position

That first castle perhaps stood upstream of the current one, also on the Bricco San Giovanni.

• Background

From that distant 1161 the castle, together with the fief of Monale, passed into the hands of various owners, following the ups and downs of history.

It was of the Montenatali, of the Bishop of Asti, of the Commune of Asti (to whom the Barbarossa assigned it), it passed to the Gardini, it was the theater of the struggles between Ghibellines and Guelphs and it was destroyed by the latter.

The fiefdom was returned to the Gardini family in 1309 and the castle was rebuilt by the Asinari family, who had taken possession of it.

A part of the fief belonged also to the Scarampi, rich Asti bankers, and they, when in the sixteenth century the fief was divided into twentieths, they retained the largest share for a long time.

In 1796, after the feuds were suppressed, the Scarampi remained owners of the castle; the last Scarampi married a Malabaila di Canale, and their daughter, heir of the castle, brought him as dowry to Count Carlo Gani of Genoa.

• Architectural notes

The brick castle, massive, on a "U" plan, is surrounded by a fenced garden, partly flat, built in the seventeenth century, paving a slope of the hill on which it was built.

The bifid battlements, which lined courtyards and towers, have been blocked by a rise, but are still visible on the whole south side and in other areas.

The double saw-tooth frieze, which runs under the battlements along the south and east façades, is well-preserved. It is a peculiar feature of this and other buildings in the area.

Inside are well-preserved cellars, basements, and paintings of some ceilings of a relatively late period (between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries).