Costigliole d'Asti - The Castle

The castle of Costigliole d'Asti was born as a defense fortress and bulwark of the Aleramic town of Loreto (now a fraction of the Municipality) and, from 1177, as a strategic outpost of the city of Asti against Loreto, destroyed in 1255. original manor were found during the restoration of the exterior, now hidden from view under the new plaster.

In 1341 the city of Asti sold the manor and the town, for six thousand gold florins, to the noble and wealthy Asti Asinari family. The latter, over the centuries, received investitures on the Costigliolese fiefdom from the Dukes of Savoy. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the castle became a sort of "condominium", divided into the four branches into which the Asinari family had divided.

In 1605 the Verasis counts broke into the history of the manor (Aurelio Asinari, without living sons, gave all his possessions to his daughter Ottavia, married to Giovanni Antonio Verasis of Asti). In 1637 the fortress was severely damaged by the troops of the Marquis of Leganes (the south-west tower was almost destroyed, then rebuilt). Ottavio II Asinari, in the mid-seventeenth century, bought the further two sections of the manor from the collateral branches of Averardo and Raffaele Asinari, which were then extinct. Thus, the counts Ottavio II Asinari (1625-1689) and Gerolamo Alessandro Verasis (1638-1695) remained masters of the castle, often in conflict with each other for reasons of neighborhood. Between the 16th and 19th centuries the manor underwent profound architectural and artistic transformations.

The section of Verasis already passed, in 1859, to the Polish prince Giuseppe Poniatowski who kept it only one year and then sold it to the Pessagno counts of Genoa and, from these, in 1890, to the Medici del Vascello and now to the Balduzzi lords. In 1887 the Asinari section came to the Luserna Rorengo di Rorà marquises who sold it in 1928, with the vast park, to the Municipality of Costigliole.

We would like to point out the main interventions carried out, over the centuries, by the most significant exponents of the Asinari families, later awarded the title of Marquis of San Marzano, and Verasis, counts of Costigliole d'Asti and Castiglione Tinella.