Guided tour of Saluzzo in 2 hours

Saluzzo is a typically fourteenth-century village: small cobbled streets, churches and elegant noble palaces with gardens chacterize its center. The city of Saluzzo has existed since Roman times. Ruled by fourteen marquises, the Marquisate of Saluzzo reached its maximum splendor in the fifteenth century, under the governments of Ludovico I and Ludovico II. In 1511 it became a sort of small capital of the territory. After a brief period of decline, the city was later annexed to the Duchy of Savoy (1601) and then to the French kingdom during the Napoleonic period. With the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, it was named the chief town of the district and the seat of the sub-prefecture. The city is "guarded" by the Stone King: the Monviso Mountain, the highest peak of the Cottian Alps.

You will have the opportunity to take a two hours long guided tour of the city, focusing mainly on the old part, la Castiglia. For four centuries la Castiglia was the residence of the Marquises of Saluzzo. Built between 1270 and 1286, the castle was expanded over the centuries, with four towers, bastions, a drawbridge and a moat. At the end of the fifteenth century it was transformed into a stately home. Rebuilt as a penal house (1825), it remained so until 1992, when restoration projects began. Today it houses the Museum of Knighthood and the Museum of Prison Memory. Casa Cavassa, symbol of the Renaissance in Saluzzo, in 1400 was the elegant residence of Galeazzo and Francesco dei Cavassa, a noble family originally from Carmagnola, both Vicars General of the Marquises. It is a fascinating building with loggias, turrets, spiral staircases, which exploits the slope of the hill to reach 6 floors. It presents a sequence of rooms with painted wooden ceilings, decorated walls, period furniture, frescoes and paintings including the Madonna della Misericordia, a masterpiece by Hans Clemer (1499).